A report launched today by the AIDS Funders’ Forum reveals that neglect and complacency in the commissioning of HIV services has created a chaotic and fragmented system, which is failing people living with HIV in the UK. 

The report, The growing challenge: A strategic review of HIV social care, support and information services across the UK, is based on the results of a survey of HIV services commissioners and service providers from across the UK.  The report reveals frustrations amongst both commissioners and service providers at an inadequate system that fails to assess what is needed by people living with HIV in the UK both now and in the future. 

One service provider commented in answering the survey:

“…the support infrastructure for HIV services is crumbling very fast.  There is unsaid complacency which you can almost feel, that people think that HIV is not a problem anymore.  We know this is not the case, because people are still dying.” 

Whilst the UK Government has put in place an impressive strategy to address the HIV epidemic in developing countries, HIV in the UK is being kept off the political agenda. As this report reveals, HIV services are almost invisible in local funding priorities and no national strategic vision to tackle the HIV epidemic exists.

Glenys Kinnock MEP comments:

“This report highlights that HIV is one of the lowest priorities in the already neglected area of sexual health, with grave consequences for those living with HIV in the UK today.  HIV is being overlooked, whereas it should be a priority both nationally and within local health services.”

The report also indicates that HIV commissioners are not putting in place services to cope with the changing face of HIV in the UK.  The HIV epidemic has changed radically in the last ten years, following the widespread introduction of anti-retroviral therapies.  These effective HIV treatments have produced a dramatic reduction in mortality, and have meant that many people living with HIV can live long, healthy and active lives.

Yet what the survey shows is that neglect and complacency in the commissioning of HIV services has meant that HIV commissioners are not basing their services on the current or future needs of people living with HIV, but instead on historical precedent, reflecting a time when people living with HIV had a different prognosis and different needs.  Not investing in services for people at the point of diagnosis or who are living well with HIV, but who may still need support services, can have a detrimental effect on their health, as one respondent commented:

“Often services only focus on people with high health needs and forget that investment in supportive services is a very effective way of preventing deterioration in terms of their health.”

Commissioners and service providers acknowledge that not enough services are in place for some of the most vulnerable groups living with HIV, including Africans, asylum seekers, children and young people.  Commissioners, many of whom lack knowledge and experience, have however failed to properly consider the needs of other key groups affected by HIV, including gay men and the over-50s.  Dr Chris Taylor, Consultant in HIV at King’s College Hospital, comments:

"This report demonstrates that although the needs of people with HIV are changing, with a greater emphasis on training, employment, housing and legal services, there is still a need for social care and support.

In my own practice, people with HIV comment that social care and support services are not available or accessible at their times of greatest need.  This needs to be taken on board by commissioners and providers of services to people with HIV."

This report presents a grave outlook for HIV services in the UK.   If HIV continues to be deprioritised, causing funding to be cut and essential services to be withdrawn, the already fragmented system will only continue to get worse.  Only if HIV is put back on the public agenda and becomes a priority both nationally and within local health services will improvements be made, and people living with HIV receive the services that they need.

The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of the Black Audio Film Collective

Saturday 28 April - Sunday 24 June 2007

The first major touring exhibition of the seminal and multi-award winning media group, The Black Audio Film Collective is presented at Arnolfini this April.

Inaugurated in 1983 and dissolved in 1998, the seven - person Black Audio Film Collective is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential artist groups to emerge from Britain in recent years.

The Ghosts of Songs is the first retrospective to explore this important group's entire body of work. Curated and produced by Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar of The Otolith Group, it reveals the Collective as dynamic, articulate artists, dedicated to engaging with the past, present and future of memory, media and the moving image.

From their base in East London, John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, Reece Auguiste, Trevor Mathison, David Lawson and Edward George produced award winning film, photography, slide tape, video, installation, posters and interventions, much of which had never been exhibited in Britain before the current tour. Their first film Handsworth Songs, which chronicled the tragic aftermath of the 1985 race riots in Handsworth, Birmingham, won seven international awards in 1987; their second film Testament, about an exiled Ghanaian politician returning to his country 20 years after the 1966 coup, premiered at the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes International Film Festival in 1988; these and subsequent works such as Who Needs A Heart (1991) and The Last Angel of History (1995) staked a claim for a new kind of moving image work that was resolutely experimental and confidently internationalist. Themes of race, memory and colonial history, run throughout all of their deeply poetic and assuredly political works.

The exhibition has been specially designed in conjunction with architect David Adjaye to show the films Handsworth Songs, Signs of Empire, Twilight City and Seven Songs for Malcolm X. A rolling programme of some of the groups other major film and video works will be presented alongside in Arnolfini's Dark Studio.

In addition, Black Audio Film Collective's installation The Black Room will be re-staged for the first time since 1996 and completely revised for a contemporary audience by the artists.

Archival material and documents, which situate the groups' practice in the social, historical, economic and geographical context of a changing Britain will also be presented, including posters and promotional materials, as well as a new interactive website.

AS you know the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade was commorated on Tuesday 27th March 2007, at Westminister Cathedral in London. The event which was organised by SET ALL FREE (www.setallfree.net) a u.k charity was attended by HRH - THE QUEEN & PRINCE PHILLIP, The Prime Minister TONY BLAIR and other dignatories(including William Wilberforces greatgreat etc granddaughter!) & televised live by the BBC. (BBC1 )
The service lasted just over an hour but  was "interrupted" by a lone protestor -   Nigerian Toyin Agbetu - founder of LIGALI - (www.ligali.org ) who was overcome by emotions & spoke out urging Mr Blair to apologise for the atrocities which were endured by our forefathers.