As the sap rises, so do other things.
The great outdoors springs back into life and
colour - and so does the libido.
Isn't that great? Hasn't it been a bum winter? Don't you just want to
get out, sniff the flowers and meet gorgeous strangers?
It'll do you good - hopefully.
However: the odds of picking up something bad for you in 2002, for all
sorts of reasons, are higher than they have been for a long time.
For those of you with HIV - this month brings the first absolutely unequivocal
case (see
treatment news) of an HIV positive man going on a holiday fling and
bringing back with him a second, nastier strain of HIV. Which made him
sick. And which probably happens a lot more often than we suppose.
For those of you without HIV - for the first time since 1996, HIV infections
among gay men increased. That's despite people being less infectious on
average due to combination therapy.
And for everyone, the British Medical Association reminds us that Britain
continues to suffer an unabated epidemic of sexually-transmitted infections.
In one year, syphilis cases have gone up 70 per cent, and they're disproportionately
concentrated among gay men who either already have HIV - or catch it at
the same time. See
the report from Dublin for the proof.
And if you've got HIV already, the last thing you need is syphilis. Or
anal warts. Or hepatitis B or C.
And all this is happening at a time where condom cutbacks and NHS restructuring
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