African patients do like GPs

Thanks for your cover of the issues IVO is facing following the NHS restructuring (PN June). I would like to make it clear however that our Positive Speakers network is funded by Comic Relief, not the Comic Strip. I was also concerned at being quoted saying: "In the African community there is already a mistrust of the GP service." This is not what our recent survey found. Three-quarters of service users surveyed described their local GP as 'accessible and understanding', with only nine per cent disagreeing. The report said GPs do need sensitivity towards patients of different cultures, but also that local organisations need to tackle service users' negative attitudes towards GPs.
Daisy Byaruhanga, Innovative Vision Organsiation (IVO), London N17
I do like Positive Nation
I am not a regular reader of your magazine, but was so touched by an article in an old back issue, ("When Opposites Attract", PN July 2001). I was compelled to let you know. I myself am not HIV positive and don't know people who are. I was very ignorant of the disease apart from what I understood from television and what I learned recently at school, where we were taught inaccurately the virus could be spread by touching.
I assumed that HIV positive people justly ganged together and shut out the outside world, but when I read the article I really started to understand about how HIV positive people are just like any others. have been a huge fan of Tom Lucas since he was in North and South. Reading this article, and others like it in your magazine, has helped

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to broaden my knowledge on the subject, and to dispel the myths I was taught at school. I just want to thank everyone involved in that article,