Time to man up and take charge of sexual health

SEXUAL AWARENESS:The stigma of HIV/Aids is painful and the reason awareness campaigns are needed

HIV diagnoses among men having sex with men has increased significantly in recent years, according to the Gay Men’s Health Service (GMHS) 2011 annual report.Those most at risk are 18 to 29 year olds and figures released by the HSE’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre for the first half of last year highlight 152 new HIV diagnoses.

Just under half of these were among men having sex with men, and overall the numbers attending for health advice and treatment at GMHS services last year increased by 36 per cent when compared to 2010.

The concern for those at the frontline delivering health services to the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) community is that complacency may be increasing among certain sexually active gay groups, with a significant number of those presenting for treatment and diagnosis now first-time attendees.

To counter this, the final phase of a dedicated year-long health programme, supported by the HSE and the Gay Health Network, and aimed at increasing awareness and treatment for both HIV/Aids and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), has enlisted the help of The George, one of the social centre points of the LGBT community for the past three decades.

The bar, which the owners say was one of the first in Dublin to be opened specifically as a gay bar, has helped finance the creation and distribution of 100,000 free safer sex packs in collaboration with the Man2Man organisation. The packs include condoms and lubricants for men who have sex with men. They will be available in the bar, but will also handed out through groups around the country in the coming weeks.

Noel Sutton, who has worked as a drag queen at The George and also with Alternative Miss Ireland, says it is the first time he remembers a gay bar getting directly involved in a health campaign on this scale, although the community has been holding health awareness programmes for several years.

“I lived through the 1980s at a time when my friends contracted the HIV virus and died as a result. It was a time when Aids was a big nasty word and everyone was scared for their lives,” he says. “This changed from the 1990s onwards, facilitated through gay men taking responsibility for their own actions and organising themselves. At that time, we started distributing condoms in bars and clubs and Alternative Miss Ireland also began to fund health-related programmes.”

Fifty-year-old Jimmy Goulding was told he was HIV positive in 1990. At that time awareness around the disease was pretty slight, he says. Goulding, who works with several health awareness groups, says some younger men today have a similar lack of awareness around HIV/Aids.

“Back then, we didn’t think it would hit Ireland but a lot of friends were testing positive at the time,” he says. “Nowadays, I think younger gay men need to be more aware.

“In some ways, HIV/Aids has gone underground in the community. If people are testing positive, they are staying away from the gay community for fear of being outed or ostracised. Younger men have a perception that treatment is there for HIV/Aids now, but they need to know it is not a cure.” The sense of stigma and shame that was sometimes attached to the disease in the past can still felt by some members of the LGBT community, and this is one of the reasons health awareness campaigns, targeted at specific groups, are needed.

“I was having a medical procedure recently,” says Goulding. “And I was asked by the doctor, after he went through my file, how did I get Aids? That shocked me and I didn’t think I would hear it from a doctor. Really, to my mind, what he was asking was did I get it from drugs or sex, and it felt like he was trying to label me.”

The total number of men in Ireland having sex with men who were diagnosed HIV positive in 2002 was 46. Last year, that number had risen to 136, marking a 195 per cent increase in a little under a decade.

Mick Quinlan,the manager of the GMHS and Man2Man, points out that all the men taking part in the promotional material for the current campaign are members of the gay community.

They have not hired models as would have been the case with other campaigns. He says this is positive and shows that, on some level, the community is not afraid to be upfront about public health issues such as HIV/Aids.

He also says that, despite funding constraints, the GMHS provides a clinic on Baggot Street in Dublin two evenings a week.

Organisations are working with health officials and several condom companies to try to make condoms available either free or at a significantly reduced cost to the gay community. Suggestions that a system where condoms could be dispensed cheaply or in return for pre-paid cards, similar to those used for telephones, are also under consideration. It is also hoped that programmes can be developed after the current campaign ends next month and that health services will continue to be delivered directly to those most at risk.

For more details see

[ man2man.ie ]