Telling people you have HIV

Telling people you have HIV features

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  Saving face: GMFA's sexual health messaging service

  Gay men’s health charity, GMFA, is launching a new service to make telling sexual partners about STIs less daunting. Gus Cairns investigates. ...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  The beginning of change: the 2010 CHIVA summer camp

  Following on from our issue looking at young people, in October, guest writer Bakita Kasadha talks to the organisers and participants in the UK’s summer camp for teenagers...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Will a long life be a good one?

  People with HIV are now living into old age – an old age many regard with fear, as Lisa Power from the Terrence Higgins Trust finds...

  From:  HIV treatment update

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  Whose fear is it anyway? People with HIV and dentists

  People with HIV are still failing to access good dental care, even though it’s in their interest. Do they assume dentists will still have issues treating them?...

  From:  HIV treatment update

Telling people you have HIV in your own words

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  Surviving isolation and abuse

  My official diagnosis was in 1989. I then took another test in 1990 in the UK to confirm the legitimacy of it. At first, I...

  From: In your own words

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  A life full of laughs and love

  I was 24, in my final year at college and was planning to go to university when I was diagnosed HIV positive in a small...

  From: In your own words

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  I was diagnosed in 1989

  I was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1989 when I was 16 years old. Now I’m living with the virus for 21 years. I have a 15-month-old cute baby...

  From: In your own words

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  Finding out

  The day was 9th of November, 2009; I was having my college lesson on the concepts of computer script languages – what a day it...

  From: In your own words

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  It takes two to tango - my family and diagnosis

  Let me tell you about telling some family members that I have HIV. I called my brother the night I was diagnosed. I wanted to tell him...

  From: In your own words

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  The sex police

  I met Amy through a friend – a friend who knew my HIV status. We got on really well and she asked if I wanted...

  From: In your own words

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  My hero!

  Sex. It’s messy, fraught with all sorts of psychological problems and yes, it’s obviously what got me into this whole predicament in the first place....

  From: In your own words

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  Bored and horny

  It’s Sunday afternoon and it’s raining. I’m bored and horny. However, I’ve got £20 left over from the night before and this will be enough...

  From: In your own words

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  The luxury of hypochondriacs

  That anxious look I get from loved ones is very hard to take, and all I want to do is reassure them that everything will...

  From: In your own words

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  The bus of doom

  I've recently read the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (which, if you haven't already read, I highly recommend). In this theological novel disguised...

  From: In your own words

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  Grateful? I don't think so

  “You must be so grateful that your partner agreed to stay with you despite the fact that you have, you know, AIDS,” said a particularly...

  From: In your own words

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  Life on HIV treatment – a personal perspective

  I’ve been taking HIV treatment for ten years – that's longer than the average life expectancy of someone with HIV when I was diagnosed back in 1991. I’ve...

  From: In your own words

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  An emotional rollercoaster

  If someone would have told me that I would be alive 18 years after my HIV diagnosis I would not have believed them. As I...

  From: In your own words

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  Finding support

  I found out I had HIV in June 2005. My world just fell apart. I didn’t know that I needed an HIV test, but the...

  From: In your own words

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  Will you marry me?

  Nothing can prepare you for finding out you have HIV. My first question was: "How long have I got to live?" I shook and cried. I...

  From: In your own words

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  Telling people

  The lunchtime after finding out I had HIV, I called a colleague who was also a close friend. I had planned just to make sure...

  From: In your own words

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  Change of direction

  I moved to Manchester with my partner to start a course in nursing with the intention of becoming a midwife. Initially everything was peachy. But...

  From: In your own words

Telling people you have HIV news from aidsmap

• For African women in the UK, formula feeding has a high social and personal cost

  Although most African women living with HIV in the UK do comply with medical recommendations to avoid breastfeeding, doing so comes at a high social and personal cost, according to qualitative research presented to the British HIV Association conference ...

  23 April 2013 | Roger Pebody

• Some barriers to adherence for black African people in London are culturally specific

  Qualitative research suggests that some of the barriers to antiretroviral adherence for black African and black Caribbean people are culturally specific, while other barriers common to many other people with HIV – such as stigma – play out in ...

  23 April 2013 | Roger Pebody

• UK healthcare workers need better information and guidance on HIV criminalisation

  Support services for people living with HIV would benefit from better information and support around prosecutions for the sexual transmission of HIV, according to a report released yesterday by researchers from Sigma Research and Birkbeck College. The study explored ...

  07 March 2013 | Roger Pebody

• Many people with HIV not disclosing at GUM clinics: estimates of undiagnosed infections may be too high

  Many people with HIV are not disclosing their status when using sexual health clinics, according to the results of a study conducted at a large London genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinic and published in Sexually Transmitted Infections. This could mean that ...

  19 February 2013 | Michael Carter

• Young gay men with HIV in the UK worry about disclosure, transmission and prosecution – older ones about confidence and sex

  A large majority of gay men in the UK with HIV describe having one or more problems with sex, an analysis of a survey originally published in 2009 reveals. Amongst other problems, the analysis of the 2009 What do you ...

  07 November 2012 | Gus Cairns

• Viral load will be no defence against prosecution for HIV exposure or transmission in Norway

  HIV campaigners reacted with dismay today to the issuing of a report by a Norwegian Commission on HIV and the Law which, while making one significant concession in the shape of allowing condom use as a defence, in some other ...

  20 October 2012 | Gus Cairns

• South African study finds most women disclose HIV status to family, but far fewer to sexual partners

  A study of HIV-positive people in the high-prevalence area of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa shows that a high proportion of people disclosed their HIV status to family members, generally immediately after diagnosis, but fewer disclosed their HIV status ...

  26 July 2012 | Gus Cairns

• People with TB and HIV in South Africa face a double stigma

  People who have both tuberculosis (TB) and HIV experience “a unique and overlapping double stigma”, according to research published in the May issue of Social Science and Medicine. Having TB sends a signal that the person also has ...

  27 April 2012 | Roger Pebody

• For study participants, PrEP was an opportunity to save their relationship

  Seeking to understand why adherence to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was extremely high in a study of serodiscordant couples, qualitative researchers have found that trial participants saw PrEP as a way they could preserve their relationship despite the pressures created ...

  30 January 2012 | Roger Pebody

• Serodiscordant relationships for Africans in the UK often marked by uncertainty and disempowerment

  African people in the UK who are involved in a serodiscordant relationship (where one person has HIV and the other does not) have a wide range of experiences, according to a new study from Sigma Research. Nonetheless, two recurrent ...

  25 November 2011 | Roger Pebody

More news

Telling people you have HIV news selected from other sources

• The Sound of Stigma

  An essay by Mark S. King—an AIDS advocate, an author and a blogger living with HIV since 1985—on why HIV stigma among gay men persists.

  14 May 2013 | Poz

• Out, but not about that - New York city council candidate comes out as HIV positive

  In a sign of how much has changed over the past two decades, Corey Johnson had not given much thought to his medical condition in the context of the Council race; in a sign of how little the emotional climate around the disease has altered, Mr. Johnson had not, as it happened, told his mother.

  07 May 2013 | New York Times

• Uganda: Govt Demands Students' HIV Status

  Heads of schools are grappling with an unusual instruction, after the government ordered them to declare the HIV status of all their people, including students.

  22 April 2013 | AllAfrica

• Swiss Federal Supreme Court rules that criminal HIV exposure or transmission is no longer necessarily a serious assault

  The Swiss Federal Supreme Court has ruled that HIV infection may no longer be automatically considered a serious assault, due to improved outcomes in life-expectancy on antiretroviral therapy.

  05 April 2013 | HIV Justice Network

• The rise of online STI dating

  The rise of online dating for people with sex infections

  28 March 2013 | BBC Health

• I'm Sorry My HIV Offends You

  It's easy to be an ass on mobile dating apps because you can hide behind a cell phone. It's also easy to get your feelings hurt if you don't quickly come to terms with the fact that guys online can be vicious.

  17 March 2013 | Huffington Post

• UK: Updated guidance on HIV transmission, the law and the work of the clinical team now published

  This document is aimed at those working in HIV medicine, especially clinicians, and aims to provide information and guidance on managing issues related to sexual transmission of HIV. It applies generic ethical and professional principles but with a particular emphasis on providing a confidential environment in which sensitive matters can be discussed. The guidance sets out the roles and responsibilities of health care professionals when caring for individuals living with HIV.

  13 February 2013 | HIV Justice Network

• A Letter to HIV on the 16th Anniversary of My Diagnosis

  I know that thanks to you I had to take a very good look at myself, and the world. I had to look straight in the eyes of death and illness. Thanks to you I stopped taking my life for granted. I had to ask difficult questions to myself. Recognise my fragilities, and my responsibilities. What was most painful: I had to question the possibility of love and intimacy.

  04 February 2013 | Speaking Up! blog

• The Price of Ignoring the Sexuality of Kenya's HIV Positive Youth

  “The problem is in the transition into adolescence and teenage years. You are dealing with young people who are at an age where they don’t communicate well. The needs of HIV positive teenagers are real and they are ignored just the same way the sexual and reproductive health needs of teens in general are ignored,” an activist said.

  03 December 2012 | Inter Press Service

• Uganda: HIV/ Aids Bill Almost Ready

  A joint civil society coalition, made up of more than 40 organisations, including human rights groups, has urged Parliament to review the clauses on mandatory testing of HIV, mandatory disclosure of a person's HIV status and the criminalisation of intentional spread of the disease.

  03 December 2012 | All Africa

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