Social and legal issues

Social and legal issues features

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  Getting tough on criminalisation

  “Nothing short of barbaric.” This was the comment of a BBC presenter, confronted with the number and sheer arbitrary injustice of criminal convictions of people accused of transmitting...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Barriers to care: immigration removal centres and HIV

  Evidence has shown that a series of failings in immigration removal centres (IRCs) has compromised the continuity of care for people with HIV. Guest writer Daniel Lombard investigates. ...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Is there life after death for HIV social care?

  HIV specialist social care is in danger of vanishing altogether as a facet of social work in England. Despite improvements in health, changes in the make-up and...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  What's happening to benefits?

  At least 40% of people with HIV are jobless,1,2 especially those who are long-term diagnosed. Most of them will be on Incapacity Benefit or other state-provided financial assistance...

  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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  The whether forecast: HIV services in the cutback era

  Some HIV experts are wondering not what our services will look like in the future but in some areas, whether there will be any HIV-specific services at all....

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Staying safe inside: HIV and hepatitis C health care in prison

  Policies on safer sex and needle exchange in UK prisons seem to have stalled. With a high and increasing prevalence of hepatitis C in our jails, and...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Where HIV is a crime, not just a virus

  A new resource, HIV and the criminal law, has just been published by NAM. Its author, former HTU editor Edwin J Bernard, also presented on the issue at the...

  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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  Equal billing

  Eleanor Briggs of NAT explains how the Equality Act will improve protection for people with HIV in the workplace....

  From:HIV treatment update

Social and legal issues in your own words

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  Surviving isolation and abuse

  ...

  From:In your own words

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  Having a baby

  I want my experiences to give hope to other people – things do not have to end when you find out that you have HIV. In...

  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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  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

Social and legal issues news from aidsmap

• HIV stigma divides and fragments gay communities

  A review of research studies has identified a growing division within gay communities, in which HIV-negative gay men associate mainly with other HIV-negative men, and HIV-positive men mostly mix with other HIV-positive men. Moreover stigma has negative impacts ...

  14 December 2011 | Roger Pebody

• Social vulnerability associated with lack of satisfaction with health care; doctors need to provide more support

  Patients who are socially disadvantaged or who lack social support tend to be less satisfied with the health care they receive, French researchers report in AIDS Care. The authors suggest that clinicians need to make extra ...

  22 November 2011 | Roger Pebody

• Diabetes, high blood pressure increase risk of unemployment for people with HIV

  Large numbers of patients are leaving employment in the years following their diagnosis with HIV, French investigators report in the online edition of AIDS. The five-year probability of work cessation was 35%, and there was little evidence that this was ...

  27 October 2011 | Michael Carter

• The spirit is willing, but... sex in the HIV-positive over-50s

  Although the average age of the HIV-positive population is increasing, in both richer and poorer countries, and though sex between older people has often been cited as a possible risk factor for HIV, there has been surprisingly little investigation ...

  16 September 2011 | Gus Cairns

• Fluctuating symptoms have major impact on quality of life and fitness to work, survey finds

  Common but non-specific symptoms of uncertain cause can dominate the day-to-day life of some people with HIV, a survey by the National AIDS Trust has found. In many cases symptoms such as fatigue, insomnia, depression, diarrhoea and neuropathy make ...

  07 September 2011 | Gus Cairns

• High levels of mental distress, unprotected sex, needle sharing, unmet prevention needs found among HIV-infected patients in St Petersburg

  Risky sex and drug use are common among HIV-positive people in Russia, investigators report in AIDS and Behavior. Discrimination was a common experience, and there was a high prevalence of depression and anxiety. “Policies and public health programs ...

  12 May 2011 | Michael Carter

• UK screening for latent TB is failing

  Revision of guidelines for the screening of migrants to the UK for latent tuberculosis (TB) could prevent a substantial number of cases of active disease, investigators report in the April 21st  edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Current guidance ...

  26 April 2011 | Michael Carter

• Significant failings in HIV care for some immigration detainees in the UK

  Many HIV-positive people held in immigration detention in the UK receive substandard healthcare, involving forced treatment interruptions, inadequate clinical investigation and breaches of confidentiality. Moreover, people are removed from the UK with inadequate supplies of antiretroviral medication or against medical advice. In a ...

  23 March 2011 | Roger Pebody

• Partners study expands our knowledge of HIV transmission risk

  A prevention study in which the intervention being tested failed is turning out to be a fertile source of information about HIV transmission risk in heterosexuals. Three substudies from the Partners in Prevention (PinP) prevention trial presented at the ...

  03 March 2011 | Gus Cairns

• Social and economic circumstances impact on HIV treatment outcomes in US, Canada, Brazil, Australia

  Social and economic circumstances have an impact on the outcomes of HIV-positive patients, a multi-national study published in the February 15th edition of the Journal of Infectious Diseases (now online) suggests. Investigators monitored patients whose HIV was diagnosed soon after ...

  23 January 2011 | Michael Carter

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Social and legal issues news selected from other sources

• SOUTH AFRICA: HIV-Related Deaths Slow Economy

  If there was no HIV/AIDS, South Africa would have 4.4 million more people than today, the size of a major city. This significant slow-down in population growth is causing a slow down in economic growth and resulting in social ills, researchers warn.

  27 January 2012 | Inter Press Service

• Medicalizing HIV: Will Social Services Get Squeezed Out?

  OAKLAND Calif Major medical breakthroughs over the past year in the treatment of HIVAIDS are setting off some surprising alarm bells While praised for their lifesaving potential they are causing a change in the dynamics of HIVAIDS care they are causing a change in the dynamics of HIV/AIDS care – a shift that may squeeze out social services needed to support patients while they’re in treatment.

  20 January 2012 | New American Media

• Sales of HIV Meds Catch Lawmakers' Eyes

  Prosecutors and legislators report an increase in illegal sales of HIV medication by people looking to feed their families or support drug habits. Will tougher criminal penalties slow the market?

  18 January 2012 | City Limits magazine

• Not guilty verdict in gay escort’s obscenity trial

  A jury in London has returned a unanimous not guilty verdict for a man charged under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for distributing DVDs containing scenes of extreme gay sex acts.

  06 January 2012 | Pink News

• Fisting on trial

  New Statesman blogger David Allen Green looks at the obscenity trial taking place in London

  06 January 2012 | New Statesman

• Porn, condoms and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation: legal analysis

  AHF wants to criminalize for-profit videos depicting unprotected sex. This will criminalize private, consensual sexual behavior among persons above the legal age of consent.

  06 January 2012 | Huffington Post

• US: Critics assail crime laws aimed at people with HIV

  In Michigan, an HIV-positive man who allegedly bit a neighbor during an argument faced a bioterrorism charge. Charges for the same acts would have been far less severe if the defendants had been virus-free.

  02 January 2012 | San Francisco Chronicle

• Julio Montaner: Hiding HIV status shouldn't mean jail time

  Canadians living with HIV/AIDS should no longer face a possible prison sentence for failing to disclose their HIV status to sexual partners, says an acclaimed Canadian doctor.

  20 December 2011 | Vancouver Sun

• Indonesia: HIV traps women and girls in poverty

  The number of reported HIV cases has tripled in Indonesia in recent years, curtailing productivity and trapping affected girls and women, especially, in poverty, according to a recent UN Development Programme (UNDP) report. 

  15 December 2011 | IRIN Plus News

• Cinema: An HIV patient's struggle against social stigma in Egypt

  Amr Salama’s latest film “Asmaa” stirred up a lot of hype before it opened in Egyptian movie theaters last week. It won several awards after its debut at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival last October. The real controversy, however, is about its storyline: the life of an HIV-AIDS patient in Egypt.

  15 December 2011 | Al-Masry Al-Youm

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