A Man Stopped Thousands of People Becoming HIV-Positive(buzzfeed.com) |
A Man Stopped Thousands of People Becoming HIV-Positive(buzzfeed.com) |
PREP has the potential to completely turn the tide on HIV infections. I live in a mid-sized midwestern city where between 10 and 25% of gay dudes in my dating pool are HIV+, many of them unknowingly and therefore continuing to spread it. There is a big push from the local public health department to get gay guys at risk of contracting HIV on PREP and it is starting to pay off.
PREP also is helping reduce the stigma of having HIV. Many people who are HIV+ live with a huge mental health burden of dealing with feeling like they are going to be rejected as a romantic partner because of their HIV status. With PREP as an option this helps reduce that burden. I'm not necessarily proud of this but I'm not sure if I would be dating my current boyfriend if PREP were not available because of the risk it could present to my health. He's an amazing guy and having this issue out of the way for us has been very helpful for us.
That's not to say that it doesn't have side effects and that it should be carefully considered but it really needs to be publicized more as a preventative treatment option in high risk populations.
Personally, I don't think that's a sentiment to be proud of or ashamed of. It's a practical reaction to the lay of the land. I hope you don't beat yourself up about it.
The CDC reports that in 2009, MSM accounted for 61% of all new HIV infections and that MSM who had a history of recreational drug injection accounted for an additional 3% of new infections. Among the approximately 784,701 people living with an HIV diagnosis, 396,810 (51%) were MSM. About 48% of MSM living with an HIV diagnosis were white, 30% were black, and 19% were Hispanic or Latino. Although the majority of MSM are white, non-whites accounted for 54% of new infections HIV related MSM infections in 2008.[7] A recent study estimated that for every 100,000 MSM, 692 will be diagnosed with HIV. This makes MSM 60 times more likely to contract the virus than other men and 54 times more likely than women
https://www.iwantprepnow.co.uk/about-us-donate
> “I’m thinking, ‘You don’t know I have to walk sometimes because I can’t afford my Oyster [the London bus and tube pass]. You don’t know that I’m literally eating once a day because I’m so broke, and I’m sleeping on someone’s sofa because no one is going to pay me to do this,’” he says. “I am no different to how I was when I was a sex worker.”
Just fyi. This does not mean that you should not donate.
I've emailed offering to help out if I can. Their costs of running the site should be zero to them, if I can help make that so then great.
There was some confusion about who should be paying for this preventative treatment. Both sexual health and prevention is normally part of Public Health and not the NHS, but public health weren't paying. This is because funding to local authorities has been slashed. Remember this when conservative supporters tell you that funding for health care has increased: they're not including the cuts to public health.
This is explained a bit here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/11/update-on-prep/
A statement from public health: http://www.adph.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/ADPH-PrEP-...
A statement from earlier NHS: https://www.england.nhs.uk/2016/08/august-update-on-the-comm...
This is the part I really don't understand. I suppose its a consequence of big bureaucracies.
This is a clear case of "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". It is so much cheaper to pay for the PrEP than to pay for treatment of HIV.
And in the UK the HIV treatment is "free", i.e. part of their national healthcare, right? So wouldn't it make so much sense for them to flood the country with PrEP, giving it at very low cost to anyone who expresses an interest?
Firstly, this is only for England. Health is devolved in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Preventative stuff and a lot of sexual health stuff (STD screening, free contraception) is paid for by "Public Health", which is part of local government.
Treatment is paid for by the NHS, which is sort of nationally funded by NHS England to local Clinical Commissioning Groups.
Sometimes you'll have "joint commissioning" -- for example in Gloucestershire there's joint commissioning across public health and the NHS for Mental Health.
But yes, it's stupid bureaucracy and budget holding and it's caused harm.
Edit: Actually, having clicked the link it certainly looks like he's making money now. Well done to him.
"In the space of 12 months, the number of gay men in London being diagnosed with HIV had dropped by 40%. Across England it was down by a third."
The New Scientist article they link to has it correct -- this is a drop in reported new infections, not a drop in infected persons. It still hasn't been corrected.