As I prepared to attend CAHR2017 in Montreal I was elated, but a bit nervous as well. I hadn’t qualified for a community scholarship but had been accepted as a CATIE rapporteur. This meant I’d be covering the event for CATIE as well as for PositiveLite.com and then on the final day, my fellow rapporteurs and I would present a report back to the rest of the conference with a distillation of what we’d seen and heard. So yes, I had butterflies, mostly because I haven’t done much science w

This article by Hadley originally appeared in FS Magazine, a publication of GMFA, here.  HIV seems to be at the front of our minds at the moment, given the storm caused by NHS England’s decision not to fund PrEP on the NHS. Many HIV campaigners, gay men, healthcare professionals and even politicians were all eager to join a movement that will hopefully see PrEP becoming widely accessible. Perhaps it was only a timely coincidence that I finished reading The Normal Heart, just as the mod

I’m not coming to you as a Truvada virgin. I had a run in with the drug a year ago while taking it in combination with another HIV drug, Kaletra, as Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP) after an encounter in which I thought I might become positive. My thirty days on the two drugs were basically a hot mess from start to finish.  In those 30 days I constantly felt the need to throw up for most of the day, every day. It eventually got so bad that I was prescribed an anti-nausea drug that’s

This article by Myles Helfand previously appeared at TheBody.com, where you can read the entire piece. The practice of people taking an oral medication to ensure they don't contract HIV if they're later exposed to the virus -- known as HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP -- continues to gain acceptance. With PrEP's efficacy firmly established and usage rates steeply rising, the way is being paved for widespread adoption of PrEP as an HIV prevention strategy. That said, some questions abo

The Daily Mail has published some rubbish in its time, but yesterday’s news takes the cake. One of the first things I did since starting my new role as Training Manager at Terrence Higgins Trust Scotland is develop an HIV Awareness training course. In my introduction to the topic, I provide an overview to where we are with HIV today. In a nutshell, I explain, we have grown immensely in our ability to understand, prevent and treat HIV. But stigma is stubborn. Stigma has been with us since th

This article by Keith Alcorn previously appeared at AIDSmap.com here.   A judicial review in the High Court has ruled that NHS England is responsible for funding pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and decisively rebutted all the arguments used by NHS England to avoid paying for the use of PrEP. NHS England said today in response that the High Court ruling does not mean the medication will end up being funded by the NHS, and warned today that manufacturer Gilead Sciences now faces a bli

The fact that I’m writing this at 10:00 at night speaks volumes. Because when a job is just a job, you switch it off at the end of the day, go home and forget about it. But my work in HIV isn’t just a job. It’s much, much more than that. And I am so thankful I found my way back here. My last blog post at PositiveLite.com was shortly after I moved from Guelph, Canada, to Glasgow, Scotland. I wrote my last post sitting at a cafe in the West End of Glasgow, not really sure where this mov

On day three of Marks video coverage of AIDS 2016 we find him chatting with former U. S. Army Colonel Ken Pinkela, who was dismissed from military service and sentenced to 11 months of military confinement after being wrongfully accused of not disclosing his HIV status to a sex partner. We also hear from Rosemary Namiburu, a nurse wrongfully imprisoned for HIV exposure via a needle and jailed for months. Mark also chats with Elizabeth Taylor's HIV activist grandchildren, Ayanda Denge of the S

Mark S. King is in Durban, South Africa for #AIDS2016 and his video coverage begins today. In this first installment it seems remarkable, with such draconian laws in place in their home countries that so many gay men have the courage to even show up. Mark speaks with gay HIV advocates from around the world about what life is like for them back home and the ongoing criminalization of homosexuality in 75 countries. He also chats with them about PrEP, the difficulty of obtaining PrEP in some cou

Condoms R Us Remember when you first used a debit card and it was great? So convenient, no more cash to carry around. Then came the ability to simply tap my debit card on a reader and presto,  my groceries had been paid for. Not one button did I have to press.  Today, if a store doesn’t have the tap feature it’s really annoying. Now I have to punch in 'ok' for the amount, what account I’m going to pay for it and then my pin number. It feels like so much work. Once a new technology is