PERHAPS the major difference between Australia and the UK is that patients have to pay for their HIV medication. Roughly, if you are unwaged and on Medicare you pay $5.40 (£3.40) per item and if you are in full time employment you have to pay up to $33.30 (about £21) per item. Medicare is Australia’s universal health care system… it is intended to provide affordable medical treatment… but as you can see it’s not exactly free. Another difference seems to be that GPs play a greater role in the treatment of people living with HIV.

So far as support is concerned, people in Sydney appear to be very well served. ACON (AIDS Council of New South Wales) is NSW’s and Australia’s largest community-based gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) health and HIV and AIDS organisation. They aim to promote the health and wellbeing of the GLBT community and people affected by HIV, and reduce HIV transmission, and also serve as an ‘umbrella organisation’ for other HIV and GLBT organisations.

Amongst the HIV support organisation ACON supports, the Positive Living Centre (PLC) in Surrey Hills and Positive Life NSW were the two that attracted me most. The PLC is a haven for people living with HIV with its comfortable lounge, free Internet access, consultation rooms and a large kitchen and dining room at the rear of the premises. Although it is open each week day, the most popular days are Tuesdays when breakfast is served and Fridays for lunch. Having shown proof of my HIV diagnosis and signed up as a visiting member at the start of my trip I was able to meet people and share lunch with them on the last week of my stay.

It was over a nutritious and substantial meal that I found out about Medicare and prescription charges. Finance seems to be as big a problem for people living with HIV in Australia as it does in the UK. I discovered there is a positive women’s group, but unlike most HIV centres in Britain, the majority of people living with HIV I saw in Sydney were white gay men and this seems to be the case across the rest of Australia. Generally, the people I spoke to were satisfied with the HIV services provided in NSW, but from what I heard, the situation they enjoy is not common in every state in the country.

ACON also refers individuals to other services like the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation (BGF) which is Australia’s oldest HIV support organisation founded a year before ACON in 1984. They offer social and financial support to people living with HIV in NSW. Unfortunately there wasn’t time to meet up with anyone from BGF nor with Positive Life NSW who produce first-class HIV publications and run a Positive Speakers Programme. Nevertheless, I hope to establish contact with both of them in preparation for a return visit in the not too distant future.

To be continued….

ACON (AIDS Council of New South Wales)

Bobby Goldsmith Foundation (BGF)

Australian:  The nunbers

16,700 people living with HIV in the Australia

300 young people under 18 infected in the Australia

5,000 children live in a family affected by HIV

75 people die every year from illnesses related to their HIV infection

1,000 people are diagnosed with HIV every year in year Australia

2008: the highest number of new diagnoses in the Australia was recorded

 

AIDS Trust of Australia website – www.aidstrust.com.au

ACET, Jersey’s only charity dedicated to HIV social care,  prevention and education faces a service delivery crisis after the islands government announce budget cuts.

HIV prevention and social care services will disappear, as the charity is forced to make staff redundant, putting a question mark over the charities ability to survive in the long-term, if vital funds are not found.

The decision to cut funds to ACET ignores the public heath risk of  blood born viruses, says the charity.

Bruce Willing, Chairman of ACET told the BBC: “If ACET is to continue to offer care and support to those living with the illness, as well as to educate islanders, particularly young people, about the potential risks and behaviours that may increase their chances of contracting blood related illnesses, we have to find a source of new funding urgently.

“This is a sad time for our staff and also one of considerable concern for our clients who are naturally seeking reassurance about what emotional and practical support will be available to them from May onwards.

The minister for treasury and resources had provided ACET with a £38k grant from the Drug Confiscation Fund, but the charity say it is not enough.

Jersey is a parliamentary democracy that is a dependency of the British Crown. It is a British island, but is not part of the United Kingdom and is not a colony.

ENDS

LAST Wednesday saw probably the last local authority sponsored HIV conference, ‘Positively Together’. Organised by the Sheffield Centre for sexual Health, the overwhelming mood of the event was of the need to be positive in the face of an uncertain future.

Unfortunately the headline speaker, Baroness Joyce Gould, was prevented from attending by illness, and so the conference was opened by Clive Skelton, the city’s sexual health champion, who argued for the benefits of his position whilst acknowledging that his uniqueness in English local government made it likely that it would not survive the oncoming changes and cuts.

The morning’s sessions were all keynote speeches, delivered by Dame Denise Platt, Sir Nick Partridge, and Dr. Christine Bowman, on the social care system, the healthcare system, and clinical progress and change respectively.

Both Dame Denise and Sir Nick focused on the radical changes being proposed by the new Coalition Government. Denise noted that the HIV/AIDS sector had itself emerged from a collection of community based organisations not unlike the vision for the future of social care and service provision being promoted by the Prime Minister. She noted that despite the axing of the AIDS Support Grant, NAT had been successful in securing named allocations for monies given to local government, and called upon HIV/AIDS organisations to ensure that they hold local government to account for spending the allocations on HIV/AIDS services.

Nick outlined the Government’s proposals for reforming the healthcare, and especially its focus on ‘geographical localism’, and the commissioning of healthcare services by GP consortia. Regard GP commissioning, Nick argued that the proposals create difficulties for HIV services, as they give no role for GP consortia in commissioning HIV services, despite the need for HIV services to be better embedded in primary care. He also noted that little coverage had been given to the Government’s Public Health proposals, although it contained a number of proposals that will impact on HIV prevention agencies such a THT, which is currently making £5m of cuts to reflect a 12% loss of income from government contracts.

Christine Bowman provided a more upbeat note, as she detailed the progress that had been made in stabilising people living with HIV, including reducing mother to child transmission, whilst also noting that this highlighted the difference in outcomes for those individuals who present late, and usually with extremely compromised immune systems and opportune illnesses. She also noted that antenatal HIV testing by midwives had proved to be successful, and argued that it should serve as a prototype for introducing HIV testing across the healthcare system.

Following a series of workshops, covering issues such as ‘HIV and stigma’, ‘the role of the voluntary sector’, and ‘Positive Living’, the conference returned to plenary session, with addresses given by Silvia Petretti of Positively UK on the needs and rights of PLWHIV, Mark Pitts of Sheffield City Council on the AIDS support grant, and closed with a barnstorming presentation by Barbara Allen, a GP from Manchester about how her practice works actively with HIV positive patients to enable them to manage their health.

Overall the conference was an interesting mix of pessimism, optimism, and uncertainty about the future. On the evidence of this conference, whether the Government’s reforms across health and social care will improve the lives of people living with HIV, aware or unaware of their status, seems to leave most people feeling very much the same.

Presentations from the conference are available at: http://www.sexualhealthsheffield.nhs.uk/news/6-3-positivelytogether.php