NZAF Executive Director Shaun Robinson The United Nations global HIV/AIDS agency has not responded to claims that it is a homophobic organisation. Just over a month ago the boss of the NZ AIDS Foundation, which runs one of the world's most successful HIV prevention programmes, described UNAIDS as homophobic and arrogant in its disregard for men who have sex with men. UNAIDS is highly influential in the creation and funding of many HIV prevention and support programmes, particularly in developing nations where, although the major proportion of the epidemic is amongst straight people, there are significant numbers of men who have sex with men struggling against their own epidemics. The agency released its 2013 global HIV/AIDS report, which showed that new HIV infections among adults and adolescents fell by 50 percent or more in 26 countries between 2001 and 2012. It believes that aggressive drug treatment to lower the levels of HIV in the bodies of HIV-infected individuals, rather than relying on promotion of safe sex, primarily through condom use, will halt the spread of the disease. Shaun Robinson of the NZAF said a claim by UNAIDS that the global HIV epidemic could therefore be over by 2030 ignores the fact that the epidemic amongst gay men world-wide continues to rise. He accuses the organisation of ignoring the needs and realities of HIV infection amongst men who have sex with men. GayNZ.com Daily News approached UNAIDS for comment and was advised to contact it's Executive Director, Dr Luis Loures. Over half a dozen attempts to speak with Dr Loures at a cellphone number supplied by UNAIDS proved unsuccessful. Concurrent requests that it might be easier for Loures or UNAIDS staff to reply to our emailed questions have been ignored. In March last year, when the NZAF boss first publicly took exception to UNAIDS claims that proposed aggressive HIV drug treatment programmes amongst infected individuals could signal the end of the world-wide epidemics, GayNZ.com also attempted to get a response from UNAIDS, but our approaches to the organisation on that occasion were also never responded to. The questions we supplied to UNAIDS after Dr Loures' recent claim of a likely end to the epidemic by 2030 were: Does this claim include the epidemics amongst men who have sex with men (MSM) which are the primary epidemics in nations such as New Zealand? In Dr Loures' scenario what balance of/between treatment and prevention is most likely to lead to the elimination of the epidemic amongst MSM? What evidence does he or UNAIDS have that Treatment as Prevention works amongst MSM? Can he or UNAIDS give any examples of Treatment as Prevention working in real environments/populations as opposed to clinical situations? Given that the MSM epidemic is the one part of the global HIV situation which is still increasing, what priority and resources does UNAIDS direct to this area? Is Dr Loures concerned that at the 2010 and 2012 International AIDS Conferences (not, we appreciate, a UNAIDS event) only 17% of the abstracts accepted for the conference dealt with issues relating to MSM?
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Sunday, 10th November 2013 - 10:05am