Six years ago National AIDS Manual collaborated with the Terrence Higgins Trust,
the HIV project and Gay Men Fighting AIDS in an audit of gay men's HIV
prevention work in the UK. The report, HIV Prevention for gay men: a survey of
initiatives in the UK. The audit of 226 prevention agencies found that only 4%
were doing substantial HIV prevention work with gay men, despite the fact that
gay men accounted for the majority of new infections in the UK.
Since
that report was published, a lot has changed. Gay men's prevention work now
takes the biggest share of prevention funds in London, and the myth of a
dwindling gay epidemic has been decisively punctured by research which reveals
continuing high levels of unprotected sex and a steady level of 2000+ new
infections amongst gay men each year in the UK. A useful graphic review of
trends in HIV infections in the UK can be found at href="http://www.demon.co.uk/gmfa/gmfa/h-facts.htm">http://www.demon.co.uk/gmfa/gmfa/h-facts.htm
Yet
even when health authorities allocate more funds to gay men's prevention, this
doesn't mean that things improve. A recent audit of gay men's needs in Brighton,
the UK's third largest gay city after London and Manchester, paints a sorry
picture of a continuing mismatch between the needs of gay men in Brighton and
the HIV prevention services they are offered. The report has aroused fierce
controversy in Brighton because of its uncompromising dissection of local health
authority spending on HIV prevention, and because of efforts by some in the
local gay community to tone down its conclusions. Decide for yourself by reading
the report at href="http://www.racoon.dircon.co.uk/zorro/zorro.html">http://www.racoon.dircon.co.uk/zorro/zorro.html