People with HIV urged to
‘protect sexual partners’ as Mola gets nine years
An Italian man who lived in Edinburgh has been jailed for nine years for infecting
his lover with both HIV and hepatitis C.
Chef Giovanni Mola, 38, was found guilty at Glasgow High Court, in February,
of ‘culpably and recklessly’ failing to say he had HIV, endangering
his girlfriend's life. Mola denied all the charges.
He was said to have had unprotected sex with the woman over a six month period
in 2003 and 2004. Mola was extradited from Italy where he had been serving
a jail term in the southern Italian city of Taranto.
The court heard that Mola claimed to have had 200 lovers and refused to use
a condom when he began a relationship with an Edinburgh woman in 2003, even
though he knew he had been HIV positive for the previous three years.
During the eight-day trial, the court heard how the woman, known for legal
reasons as Miss X, felt she had been handed a death sentence.
"I felt I was dying and needed spiritual guidance and went to see a chaplain.”
“I’ve not told anybody else at work or any members of my family.
The impact of it would have devastated them. It would tarnish the family's
good reputation and I would be branded as a promiscuous person. If it was
made public I couldn't cope. I would have to leave the country."
Sentencing Mola in April to nine years, Judge Lord Hodge said: “What
you did to Miss X was chillingly callous and showed utter indifference to
her.”
The implications of the case for HIV positive people who fail to disclose
their status before they have sex has yet to be fully understood.
However the suggestion was made in court at the Mola case that the regular
wearing of a condom would demonstrate the absence of reckless behaviour. This
defence has not yet to be tested.
Mola’s is the 13th conviction of someone in Britain for passing on HIV.
James Chalmers, a law lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, said such cases
are exceptional and there was no flood of prosecutions on the way.
“Ultimately, condoms rather than the criminal law provide the best hope
of limiting the spread of sexually transmitted infections,” Chalmers
told the BBC.
National Aids Trust said prosecuting people for reckless transmission was
undermining efforts to halt the spread of HIV.
“Stigma and discrimination around HIV are increasing as people living
with HIV are cast as criminals, making it even more difficult for them to
tell other people,” said trust chief executive Deborah Jack.
“Prosecutions are also undermining efforts to encourage people to take
responsibility for their own sexual health, by implying it is the sole responsibility
of the person living with HIV to have safer sex.
“People may also be discouraged from getting tested and learning their
status for fear of being prosecuted,” she added.
NAT advised all people living with HIV to “protect sexual partners from
infection”.
HIV services ‘crumbling fast’
says report
People
living with HIV and Aids are being let down by public services according to
a damning new report from leading HIV sector funders.
The Aids Funders’ Forum report said commissioners in local authorities
and primary care trusts are letting down people with HIV across the UK.
The forum is a consortium of influential non-government HIV funding organisations
including the Elton John Aids Foundation (EJAF), Crusaid, the Monument Trust,
MAC Aids Fund, the Derek Butler Trust and the Peter Moores Foundation.
When The Growing Challenge: A Strategic Review of HIV Social Care was published
in April, it sent shock waves through the sector.
The report said complacency about HIV was leading to “chaotic and fragmented’
health care for people with HIV.
And despite medical advances there is a lack of planning from the NHS about
future problems. One contributor warned that the support infrastructure for
HIV services was “crumbling fast”.
Services for people with HIV are focused on people with “high health
needs”, the report found.
Investment in supportive services such as counselling was an “effective”
way of maintaining the health of people living with HIV, the report said.
Few local authorities across the country now fund social services’ support
for people living with the virus.
Lord Smith of Finsbury, a former Labour cabinet minister who is HIV positive,
said: “This report reveals that there are too many people living with
HIV who are simply not getting access to the services they need. This could,
of course, have grave consequences for their overall health and well-being.”
Jeff Ackers
Sex
education is not enough
Young black and minority ethnic groups in Britain get mixed messages in sex
education, a new study reports.
The Naz Project carried out a two year research project with the Trust for
the Study of Adolescence.
Teenage pupils at 16 schools were questioned and it became clear black teenage
boys had much less sexual health knowledge than girls. Openness about sex
was lowest in Asian families and black female teenagers were the most conservative.
Several youngsters said they had received the basic science about sex but
nothing on relationships.
Sheila, 19, told a meeting at the House of Commons: “I learnt about
sex at school but just biological things and not the emotional side of sex
and relationships.”
Naz Project is holding a conference on young people and sexual health on 18th
June. www.naz.org.uk
Stigma stops people disclosing at work
People with HIV are failing to fully benefit from laws to protect them from
discrimination at work because many fear their bosses are still ignorant about
HIV.
HIV employment experts issued the warning as they stepped up their campaign
to ensure employers had up-to-date HIV workplace polices in place and that
these were properly publicised to staff.
The Disability Discrimination Act protects people living with the virus from
the point of diagnosis. But disclosure of status is essential to gain legal
protection in the workplace under the Disability Discrimination Act. However,
employers are uncertain about how to apply the Act or lack suitable policies.
Professor Jonathan Elford, of City University, London, found just 31 per cent
of white and 16 per cent of non-white men living with HIV told their employer
about their HIV status.
This is despite a 2005 Mori Poll that found 60 per cent of UK adults thought
people with HIV could work like anyone else and that a majority would be comfortable
working alongside someone with HIV.
Yusef Azad, director of policy and campaigns at the National Aids Trust, said:
“Because of that high degree of self-censorship and non-disclosure in
the workplace, people with HIV deny themselves rights that the DDA has brought
in.”
UKC is working with MPs to identify public employers who fail to make staff
aware of their HIV policy.
New Zealand banker Anthony Davison recently told MPs how his employer had
reacted badly when he disclosed his HIV status.
“I told them, so… if in future there were any issues, I couldn't
be accused of springing this on them.”
Davison worked for Westpac, a bank ranked first in the world for its record
on social respon- sibility. Yet the company had no HIV policy.
The company took legal advice and told him there were concerns about the “danger”
he posed to colleagues and the legal obligations this placed on the company.
Davison said he felt bewildered and betrayed by a company he had worked for
since 1994. But he stood his ground, kept his job and now the company has
an effective HIV policy.
Improved
standards demanded in HIV care Top HIV doctors have called for the
UK to introduce opt-out rather than opt-in HIV testing. The plea is set out
in Standards for HIV Clinical Care, a joint document from the British HIV
Association (BHIVA) the Royal College of Physicians, the British Association
for Sexual health and HIV (BASHH) and the British Infection Society (BIS).
The report called for more local services for uncomplicated HIV care and included
recommendations to reduce late diagnoses and deaths.
Prof Johnson said the standards would help make HIV treatments into a manageable
disease model of care. Ex-PN editor Gus Cairns said he was only alive today
because of excellent specialised HIV care.
news on the side
Why do you have safer sex?
Sigma Research found that 50 per cent of gay men had unprotected anal sex
in the previous 12 months. In an effort to counter this, GMFA has launched
a new interactive campaign encouraging gay men to send in their own reasons
for practising safe sex to:
competition@gmfa.org.uk
Call for end to NHS charges
The inhumane and dangerous practice of charging certain migrants for HIV NHS
treatment and maternity care breaches the government's human rights obligations,
according to parliament's joint committee on human rights. Other recommendations
from the group include access to primary care for failed asylum seekers remaining
in the UK.
London named TB capital
London, according to the Health Protection Agency, continues to account for
the highest proportion of cases of tuberculosis in England, Wales and Northern
Ireland (42 per cent). Black Africans and patients with a low CD4 cell count
are the groups of HIV positive people most at risk of TB
Bad blood testimony sought
An independent, privately funded inquiry into contaminated blood and blood
products supplied by the NHS to haemophiliacs is beginning this spring, conducted
by Lord Archer of Sandwell QC. More than 1,750 people in the UK have died
from complications due to HIV or hepatitis C after they received contaminated
blood products in the 1980s. Details about how the inquiry will run and an
online form to put forward personal evidence is availableat:
www.archercbbp.com
Lambeth is top HIV borough
Figures released in April by the Health Protection Agency show that HIV cases
in London have increased by 58 per cent in the past five years. Worst hit
are the boroughs of Lambeth with 3,984 HIV cases in 2005, followed by Southwark
with 3,154 cases. These are closely followed by Newham, Camden and Westminster.
HIV and STIs: a bad combo
A study based on two UK HIV clinics has shown that people recently diagnosed
with drug-resistant HIV are twice as likely to have had sexually transmitted
infections (STIs) than those without drug-resistant HIV. Most common STIs
were NSU, gonorrhoea and chlamydia. Rates of drug resistant HIV among newly
diagnosed patients in the UK are about 10 per cent, much lower than in the
US, says PN treatments editor Robert Fieldhouse.
Deportation halted
A campaign by HIV and children’s charities has halted the deportation
of a seven-year-old boy to Malawi along with his sick parents. A barrister
representing the boy and his parents has won a restraining order and the family
cannot now be deported without a judicial review.
The boy faced being orphaned and then dying alone and untreated in Malawi.
“There are about 20 children who are affected by HIV in Britain who
are facing immediate deportation,” said Martin Narey, chief executive
of Barnardo’s.
Red campaign in red
Bono's Red initiative, intended to help millions of people living with HIV
in Africa has, so far, raised just £9 million. Red involves global companies
such as Armani, Gap, Apple and Motorola launching specific products with a
proportion of profits going to Red. The cost of setting up the scheme has
been over £50 million. The Red American Express card pays just one per
cent of purchases to the Fund.
Trinidad docs flee from HIV
Doctors in Trinidad don't want to treat people with HIV and are refusing to
work in the HIV ward at San Fernando General Hospital. Health minister John
Rahael said the situation was critical: “We have not succeeded in getting
local doctors so we have had to seek help from the Pan American Health Organisation.”
Insurers pay up for Aids
Because HIV is now considered a chronic treatable disease, it has become an
insurable condition according to Life Offices Association, with South African
life insurers now paying out death and disability claims. However, impact
will be limited since few death certificates cite Aids as a cause of death.
Holy water con
Thousands of HIV patients in Ethiopia are being convinced by priests from
the country’s Orthodox Church that splashing themselves with holy water
will cure them. Sky News last month reported that men, women and children
were stripped and baptised again in holy water at St Mary’s church on
Mount Entoto. Priests wear bright yellow waterproofs as they drench the hopeful.
“These people fear death and believe that coming here will prolong their
lives,” Sky’s Ian Woods reported. “Some cried out for the
demons to leave their bodies while priests hit them with wooden crosses.”
