FW: REMINDER: Community Consensus Statement on Access to HIV Treatment and its Use for Prevention

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Gus Cairns

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May 31, 2016, 1:23:41 PM5/31/16

to Gus Cairns

Just a reminder that the deadline for comments is on Friday

Gus

Gus Cairns

Editor, NAM

London WC1X 8DP

Tel. +44(0)20 7837 6988

Mob. +44(0)796 896 0407

Email g...@nam.org.uk

Website www.aidsmap.com

From: Zoe Smith
Sent: 31 May 2016 16:03
To: Gus Cairns <G...@nam.org.uk>
Subject: REMINDER: Community Consensus Statement on Access to HIV Treatment and its Use for Prevention

Hi Gus

Here is an email that you can use to send to the mail serve groups – please check that the link at the bottom works before sending etc.

***************************************************************

Dear friends and colleagues,

We wrote to you on Friday 20 May to invite you to help us to write the final version of the community consensus statement. Thanks to all of you who have already contributed valuable points, comments and suggestions. I want to let you know that the deadline for contributions will be this Friday, 3 June. If you would like to, and haven't already done so, you can share your comments by following the link at the bottom of this message. Please send this message to your friends and colleagues so they can comment too.

A quick recap

We are a group of organisations representing people living with and affected by HIV worldwide. We felt it was the right time to issue a basic set of ground rules for the provision of HIV treatment, including its use for prevention. Our ambition is to see these included at the core of every HIV treatment guideline and programme. They place the right of the person with or at risk of HIV to access treatment - in the way they want, and in a way that enables them to use it successfully.

Why now?

In the last two years, we reached three landmarks in HIV. We found that:

Treatment is beneficial for everyone with HIV, regardless of their CD4 count.
People with HIV on fully-effective treatment are non-infectious.
If HIV-negative people take HIV drugs consistently, they are protected from virtually all infections.

Guidelines now agree that everyone with HIV should be able to get treatment, and that everyone at high risk of HIV should be able to get effective prevention.

Yet worldwide many still do not get treatment, and the use of the drugs for prevention is still not widely adopted or accepted. This is to do with resources and political will. But it is also to do with the huge stigma against HIV and people with it. This makes them unable or reluctant to come forward to be tested and treated.

How you can help

This consultation page is your chance to help us write the final version of the community consensus statement. The final version, shaped by you, will be issued at the International AIDS Conference in July. It will then be available for endorsement by whoever sees it. The more people sign, the more it is likely to be adopted, so we need to make sure the statement genuinely reflects the views of the community.

We welcome all your suggestions, comments, and feedback; please send this page to your friends and colleagues so they can comment too. We require comments in English at this stage, but feel free to translate the statement and circulate it so you can collect comments. The final version will be translated into at least four other languages.