Thu 6 Oct 2016 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Nick Laing Loss of New Zealand's "most important" ongoing research into what's underscoring the worst HIV diagnosis level in the history of the epidemic has dealt a significant blow to the NZ AIDS Foundation's prevention programme. The Ministry of Health has chosen not to provide the primary funding for the 2017 GAPSS and GOSS research which gives three-yearly insights into what is happening amongst gay and bisexual men to sustain the epidemic. The last GAPSS and GOSS study is already three years out of date. In Australia similar ongoing research is conducted every year. “It's definitely a real concern for us,” says the NZAF's general manager of operations, Nick Laing, “because it's our most important piece of research that enables us to plan our prevention strategies directed at gay and bisexual men... so not having that is a real blow to our ability to plan adequate prevention programmes." “This is fundamentally the main piece of research that informs the majority of the work we have to do” Laing says. “And it's the one piece of research that catches a number of areas we look at such as HIV and other sexually transmitted infection risk and it's very difficult to elicit that information from other places because it's the only research that looks specifically at our gay and bisexual men." GayNZ.com has asked the Ministry of Health and the Minister of Health, Dr Jonathan Coleman, for explanations, we'll report on their responses as soon as they come to hand.