The Gay Globe and Increasing Rates of HIV

[Guest fountainhall]

Some of the findings from three internet surveys conducted amongst MSM are reported in a long article on the fridae.com website. And they make the usual disturbing reading.

 

The three studies covered approx. 220,000 men. They were each undertaken at various times in 2010. The Asia Internet MSM Sex Survey (AIMSS) comprised 13,883 men in 12 countries, the Online Buddies Men’s National Sex Study (MNSS) comprised 24,787 guys in the US, and the European MSM internet Survey (EMIS) had a much larger response of 181,490. The research generally covered not only the incidence of sex, type of sex and with whom they had sex in the previous 6 months, but adoption of safe sex practices, drug use, how they met partners and whether they discussed HIV.

 

The article is thoughtfully presented with a series of sections headed –

 

* HIV increasing globally in gay men

* A dangerous situation

* Three surveys

* The findings

* Age and education

* Sexuality and relationships

* Sex and condoms

* Is condom use the best indicator of risk?

* HIV prevalence and testing

* HIV incidence

* HIV treatments as prevention

* Happiness, disclosure and isolation

* Data not covered by the Report

* Top ten findings

 

Merely copying the findings doesn’t make much sense for this Board as all but one relate exclusively to the US and Europe. The one involving Asia reflects the fact that only about one third of respondents had tested for HIV during the previous 12 months.

 

So I’ll just quote a few of the other comments. The first is that discrimination against MSN makes it all but impossible to obtain data in some areas and some countries. That said –

 

1. We are seeing a sequence of increases in HIV in MSM in Asian countries. In 2003, a study found that one in six MSM in Bangkok had HIV. Two years later it was nearly one in four and has stayed at that level. New diagnoses in MSM doubled in Japan and tripled in Taiwan between 2002 and 2007. The Philippines has seen a sevenfold increase in HIV diagnoses amongst MSM under 30 in the last four years. Wherever you look in Asia’s expanding cities, you find high levels of HIV among MSM: one in eight in Chongqing, China (up from one in 50 six years ago), one in six in Mumbai, one in three in Yangon.

 

2. (There) is, potentially, a dangerous situation if HIV concentrates amongst MSM in countries where to seek testing and treatment is potentially to expose yourself to persecution. The potential for intensifying the oppression both of gay men and of people with HIV is obvious.

 

3. The age of respondents was 38.5 (mean) in the US survey and 34.1 in the European, and the median age in the Asian one was 29 . . . In the US and western Europe, it’s been getting easier to be out as gay to yourself and others for a long time; in eastern Europe and Asia we are seeing a young, educated new generation coming out for the first time.

 

4. About 85% of gay men in all three surveys had had anal sex during the previous six months or a year . . . in MNSS and EMIS at least, ‘[using] a condom every time’ was a minority behaviour. In EMIS 58% of respondents reported at least one episode of unprotected anal intercourse during the last year. In MNSS, only 45.5% of men used a condom the last time they had anal sex and the only age group in which more than half (52%) used condoms last time was the under-25s. There was a steady decline in condom use with age, and the over-50s were, in the US survey, half as likely as the under-25s to use a condom. There were interesting ethnic differences: African-American, Hispanic, and Asian men were all significantly more likely to have used a condom the last time they had anal sex compared to their white counterparts.

 

In AIMSS, rates of condom use were higher, with only 41% of respondents saying they’d had unprotected anal sex over the last six months. However, it found much lower rates of use amongst its minority of HIV-positive men.

 

5. The most common safer-sex strategy in the MNSS respondents was not “Use a condom with me” but “Don’t cum in me” . . . This may indicate that much more nuanced safer-sex messages are needed. Gay men are attempting to use more ways to protect themselves than are endorsed by standard prevention messages. Some may be very flawed, but others may offer significant protection and should be encouraged.

 

6. In Asia, an overall 6% of respondents had been diagnosed HIV positive, ranging from 2% in China to 12% in the Philippines . . . Just under 60% of Asian respondents (80% in Thailand, under 50% in the Philippines) had ever tested for HIV and about a quarter in the last six months, ranging from a third in Thailand and South Korea to one in five in the Philippines – a similar frequency to Europe.

 

7. In Asia, HIV status disclosure – to any sexual partner – was the exception rather than the rule: 67% of HIV-positive respondents had never discussed their HIV status with a partner, and in mainland China that was 88%.

 

http://www.fridae.as...gay-globe?n=sec

 

The low response rate in Asia must render some of the findings questionable. But they do surely present some sort of guide. I only hope that some organisation will undertake a much more detailed regional survey to provide more detailed accurate statistics.

[Guest fountainhall]

The most recent study in the UK finds that a rise in HIV infections amongst gay ad bisexual men is the direct result of a fall in the use of condoms. Between 1990 and 2010, it found that there had been a 26% rise in the proportion of men who do not have sex with condoms.
 

 

Rates of HIV have been rising in recent years with latest figures showing cases among men who have sex with men (MSM) in the UK reaching an all-time high . . . Overall, one in 20 MSM are infected with HIV

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21474066