Leading journalists from the gay press gathered at a media summit with the National AIDS Trust on Tuesday.
Held in Soho, London earlier this week, the objective of the annual meeting was to stress the importance of accurate reporting around HIV infections and AIDS treatment.
This comes at a time when HIV charities around the country are facing increasing pressure in light of government cutbacks.
Guests included journalists from PinkPaper.com and monthly glossy Gay Times (GT), plus several other key titles.
Deborah Jack, Chief Executive of NAT, stressed how important media coverage is in terms of providing the public with accurate information about HIV.
“Some of the real problems we see in the media is when journalists are ill informed and they print things that quite clearly aren’t true,” says Jack. “The better informed the media are, the more chance there is of educating people about HIV.”
According to an Ipsos MORI survey, carried out on behalf of NAT in 2010, 20 per cent of the public don’t realise that sex without a condom between two men is an HIV transmission route. Perhaps more worryingly, 10 per cent of people believe that spitting on somebody can pass on HIV.
“In the absence of good information, there’s scope for these myths to just grow. People aren’t being told the facts, so it’s very easy for these myths to begin to take credence.” However, one positive truth revealed by the MORI survey was the fact that the majority of people are supportive of those living with HIV."
Despite the fact that between 70% and 90% of people recently infected with HIV will experience symptoms – the most common three being fever, sore throat and rash - up to 26% of gay and bi men with HIV in the last year weren’t aware that they had the disease.
Communications Manager at NAT, Charli Scouller, added: “The majority of new HIV infections are passed on from someone that didn’t know they had it. We carried out some research back in 2008 which shows that healthcare professionals were repeatedly missing the early signs of HIV. We’re keen as an organization to get the whole picture, so we’ve been conducting some research with Gaydar to look at whether gay men are aware of the early signs of HIV.
“We’ve also been asking what they’d do if they experienced those range of symptoms,” says Schouller. “We worked on the research questions with Martin Fisher, a well known HIV doctor, and he’s going to be presenting the findings.”
At a time where HIV prevention spending is being cut, media coverage and public events are crucial in terms of helping raise the profile of HIV charities in order to help them fund ways to manage the disease.
Josh Rafter and Priyesh Shah, who were also present at the briefing event, will be running The Wig Party this year, which is described as “the most flamboyant and forward thinking Charity event of the year with the sole aim of improving the lives of those affected by HIV and AIDS.”
Another upcoming event, which will also be held in aid of NAT, is Spring Awakening, which will take place on 11 May 2011. Both events hope to raise money for NAT in their battle against HIV.
