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The AP/Google.com on Friday examined new approaches to curbing the spread of HIV among men world Health Organization have sex with hands. A political program in North Carolina that showed "promising signs" enlisted local MSM opinion leadership to pep up their peers to praxis safer sex in an effort to curb the spread of HIV, the AP/Google.com reports. In turn back for promoting condom use, regular HIV testing and other actions, the leadership were given $25 gift coupons and marketing materials. According to the AP/Google.com, the idea "may sound frivolous, merely little else has proven effective for the work force most affected by the epidemic." A study of the platform, published in June in the American Journal of Public Health, found that more MSM were practicing safer sexuality. The survey was based on repeated surveys over time of about ccc men and found a 32% reduction in unprotected anal coition during 2005, as well as a 40% simplification in the number of sex partners.
Although support for the program ran out and the feat ended in North Carolina, its success led CDC to start expanding it on a broader scale leaf to more than 200 community groups nationwide at a two-year budget of $1.5 million. CDC also aforesaid it has committed $5 million to a five-year social marketing campaign to promote HIV testing among young dark MSM. CDC is "attached to ensuring that its resources ar going to the populations hardest hit by the epidemic," Richard Wolitski, playing director of CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, aforementioned.
The article also examines issues circumferent funding for CDC's HIV prevention efforts. According to the AP/Google.com, CDC's bar budget has remained at about $700 million since 2001 spell costs have risen. In addition, bar programs that target MSM are "scattershot," the AP/Google.com reports, adding that some experts suppose even in progressive cities, prevention efforts aimed at the population consist of little more than HIV testing and distribution of no-cost condoms. According to the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, about 42%, or $280 million, of its fiscal class 2007 budget was directed at MSM. However, with 53% of new HIV cases occurring among MSM, some experts have aforementioned the financing is not enough. "At a lower limit, we want to be matching percentages to where the epidemic is," David Holtgrave of Johns Hopkins University said. Leroy Blea, a health official and past president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said that the MSM community is not "a very easy population to fund. It's often more politically viable to fund programs for women and children and youth" (Stobbe, AP/Google.com, 8/8).
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