The TAXI-KAB Study is designed to measure Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs (KAB) of gay men in Australia when they Think About eXposure to Infection (TAXI) to HIV. Gay men are going to experience many changes in the way healthcare is presented to them in the next few months. We are seeking information from these men in order to inform the progress of the "Treatments as Prevention" revolution that is occurring in Australian health care, right now. The study is vitally important to gay and bisexual mean in Australia.
The Australian National Council on Drugs has just released an updated Position Paper on expanding the availability of naloxone. Naloxone an opiod antagonist is often used to reverse the effects of an opiod overdose. Read the paper
8th Viral Hepatitis Conference Blog - Tuesday Afternoon
Wednesday 12 Sept Morning
The last morning of the conference brought together all of the ideas raised at the conference. The concept of trust has been pivotal to the conference as were the ideas of stigma and discrimination. Further to this the idea of self-stigma as being a pervasive boandary to treatment was discussed. The discussion on how to rid Hep. positive people of self-stigma raised the peer work reviewed during the conference, particularly within the ETHOS project. Annie Madden stated that the need for properly funded peer participation in service delivery, including GPs was crucial, as otherwise peerwork would be written off as being a failure as the funding was currently ad hoc and unsuitable. Models of Care talked about over the conference period were ETHOS and patient centred care among many others. The idea of people having to "work" to gain treatment was discussed as a bi-product of trust, stigma and discrimination. We need to move away from Hepatitis positive people thinking that they are not due the very best of care and the idea that the population is "lucky" to recieve treatment at all. In the science stream of the conference new imaging techniques, called deep imaging, and dynamic imaging have been discussed as ways to characterise the resistance of Hepatitis to immune responses as well as elucidate the role of the human immune system in viral control. Really folks, I have tried to give you a breif overview of the conferences highlights, but it has been an impossible task to include it all. For this reason I am going to stop as the conference is over and most of the papers are going to be put up on the conference website. I will close by saying that it has been a very productive three days, however we have a long way to go. Stigma and discrimination reared its ugly head as I blogged on monday night even within such a dedicated group of people, which is saying much about how far we have to go. Although treatment times are decreasing and efficacy is increasing much further research and therefore funding is needed. Cheers to all who were involved and I'll see you all back in the land of OZ.....C
