38-year-old Leeds nurse Stacey Atkinson has been named Nurse of the Year. She is pictured receiving her award from Health Secretary Alan Milburn at a ceremony in London last month. Stacey was particularly praised for her sex education work for children with severe learning difficulties.

Safer sex ads ‘due out by Christmas’
According to a leaked report in The Observer, the new national safer sex campaign will start with a £2million advertising campaign on radio and in magazines, clubs and pubs in the party season before Christmas. The campaign, aimed at young people in their 20’s, will use slogans such as ‘It could be you’ and ‘To enter the sex lottery, just sleep with someone without a condom’. The late arrival of the DoH sex campaign means that the joint DoH and NAT “Are you HIV Prejudiced?” campaign (see article) has been postponed until 2003.

HIV scare in North East
There has been a big rise in new HIV cases in North east England. The number of people diagnosed within the region has risen by 66 per cent compared with 1999 and compares with a national average increase of 44 per cent. 66 new cases of HIV were recorded in the area in the first three months of 2002, compared with just 166 in the whole of 2001. Dr Ed Ong, of Newcastle General Hospital, said the rise is particularly occurring among heterosexuals: “The message is not getting through to certain parts of the population,

particularly heterosexual men.”