Compiled and edited by Martin Flynn
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has launched a new $3.8 million 'Prevention for Positives' effort in the USA. The campaign is aimed at targeting HIV positive people to take responsibility for not transmitting the virus. It follows the controversial 'HIV Stops With Me' campaign which has run on posters, TV commercials and websites for the last two years in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston. Critics of the campaign say it makes scapegoats of HIV positive people, but supporters say that most prevention efforts still focus on those who are not infected and that the intent is not to pass judgement but to offer emotional support. For details, visit: www.hivstopswithme.org
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Ageing of Aids: 'Golden Girls' in danger!
'The Ageing of Aids' has become this month's hot topic
for HIV prevention workers in the USA.
This follows reports from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that people
over 50 now make up more than one in eight cases of Aids, and has increased
by 20 per cent in the last decade.
The US News and World Report quotes 67-year-old Jane Fowler, who recently
caught HIV from a man she had been friends with for 25 years. She said:
"I was a virgin when I was married. I figured condoms were for preventing
pregnancy and I didn't have to worry about that anymore."
Doctors are often not clued up either. Fowler, who is founder and director
of 'HIV Wisdom for Older Women', said: "A younger doctor, especially,
may view an older woman as a grandmother type.
"He wouldn't ask his grandmother about her sex life," she added.
Experts say that figure is almost certain to keep rising and point to
a larger aged population having
more sex later in life, the easy availability of potency drugs such as Viagra, and a lack of safer sex knowledge as determining factors.
