ABC Health Report, Monday 18 March 2019 5:45 PM Leading Aboriginal researcher Associate Professor James Ward* is calling for action in remote Australia to deal with a preventable epidemic of sexually transmissible infections — including syphilis — in a population that’s no more sexually active than non-Indigenous people of the same age. He joined Dr Norman Swan’s Health Report on ABC RN...
Australia will never be HIV-free if access to prevention requires a medicare card
The Conversation, January 23, 2019 12.21pm AEDT by Nicholas Medland, Sexual health physician and senior researcher, UNSW Australia aims to “virtually eliminate” HIV transmission by 2022, according to the health minister’s new national HIV strategy. This ambitious goal has been made possible by biomedical HIV prevention, a new and highly effective way of preventing HIV using medications. But new...
Support for ending and managing HIV
Australian Government Department of Health, 29 November 2018 The Australian Government is strengthening its commitment to ending HIV with the announcement of funding for a new strategy that aims to virtually eliminate the transmission of HIV, the approval of the first HIV self-testing kit and the listing of a new medicine on the PBS. The first HIV self-testing kit, the Atomo Self Test was...
Australian sex education isn’t diverse enough. Here’s why we should follow England’s lead.
The Conversation, 7 August 2018 By David Rhodes, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University How children are taught about sex, relationships and sexuality at school is shaping up to be a political hot potato in Australia (again). It’s already been slated to be an issue in the Victorian state elections later this year. That’s just a short time from being on the agenda during the...
Gonorrhoea: Drug Resistance in Australia
Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), 26 June 2018 There has long been concern globally about the potential emergence of drug resistant STIs. In response, the World Health Organisation released new treatment guidelines for three common STIs – chlamydia, gonorrhoea and syphilis – in 2016. At present, strains resistant to first line treatment of syphilis and chlamydia are not common...
The time for action on Human T-Lymphotrophic Virus has arrived: An open letter to WHO
Australasian Society for HIV Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM), 10 May 2018 ASHM has joined the call by leading Human T-Lymphotrophic Virus 1 (HTLV-1) researchers, clinicians and patients to take action on HTLV-1 by signing an open letter to the WHO, published in an abbreviated form in The Lancet. The letter calls on the WHO to support the promotion of proven, effective...