Bob Leahy: Thank you for talking to PositiveLite.com about your case. Now before we get in to that, I want you to tell me first your background. Ken Pinkela: Sure! Ken Pinkela is still a card-carrying Lieutenant Colonel in the (US) army.
US: Texas man who pled guilty to murdering woman after learning she had HIV sentenced to 50 years
A Lufkin man has accepted a 50-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to killing a woman after learning she had HIV after he had sex with her. Justin Welch, 23, entered the plea in District Judge Bob Inselmann’s courtroom. “Guilty,” Welch said. “Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” Yes sir,” Welch said.
Welch was arrested in June in San Antonio after the Angelina County Sheriff’s Office issued a warrant for his arrest for first-degree murder of Elisha Henson, 30. An arrest affidavit states Welch killed her after he learned she had HIV and they had already had sex.
According to another arrest affidavit, Welch’s co-conspirator, Rosalind Smith, told investigators the three of them were getting high on meth when Smith talked to Henson about her having HIV. Welch appeared to have heard the conversation and “appeared astonished to know” Henson had HIV. Smith told investigators that Welch later told her that Henson was dead. Smith is accused of disposing of the body in Rivercrest.
Smith is scheduled for jury selection on Jan. 20.
Welch’s Lawyer Al Charanza said that Welch was remorseful for what he did. But Hensen’s mom, Brenda Carrell, said the damage is done. After Welch pleaded guilty, Hensen’s mother gave her impact statement. “You have no heart.” Carrell said. “You are a killer in my eyes.You must pay for what you did. Elisha was a mother of two amazing boys, who today have a grave to visit.” “I am sorry,” Welch said.
China: Warranted fears of stigma and discrimination in healthcare settings resulting in people with HIV not disclosing their status
“I was so desperate, and I could not imagine the future if I was really infected,” Fu Yi (pseudonym), a maternity doctor at Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital in Chengdu, recalled her feelings when she was exposed to HIV-infected blood during a birth in 2010.
Fu accidentally exposed her injured foot to the blood of the HIV-positive patient who was delivering a baby – Fu did not know the patient was HIV-positive, until the blood test results came out the next day.
Fu immediately started to take anti-AIDS emergency prevention pills. She suffered from the side effects, vomit and nausea, for a month, and lived in an abyss of fear for over half a year until she was eventually declared HIV free, she told the Global Times.
This incident was made public recently when the media began to report on the danger of exposure to infectious diseases that medical professionals face.
“We call [what Fu experienced] ‘occupational exposure,'” Xiang Qian, with the healthcare associated-infections division at Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, told the Global Times.
Occupational exposure for medical staff can be defined as coming into contact with infectious virus or toxic substances at work, which can pose health risks, according to Xiang.
Fu was not the only medical worker who has been exposed to infectious diseases at work. As of press time, there are no national statistics available, but in the hospital where Fu works a total of 122 medical staff reported being exposed to infectious diseases in 2013, including AIDS, hepatitis B and syphilis, according to Xiang.
From January to November this year, 88 medical workers, 43 percent of them nurses and 29 percent of them doctors, were exposed to infectious diseases at work. Hepatitis B topped the list, with 45 percent of the incidents of exposure involving the disease, followed by syphilis with 14 percent and HIV with 7 percent.
Among those infectious diseases that medical staff are exposed to, HIV is the most serious.
The risk is heightened as many patients do not disclose their HIV infection to physicians when being treated for other conditions. Meanwhile, many physicians do not take the kinds of precautions necessary to avoid becoming infected.
Concealment
Pregnant women usually go through a full blood test for possible infectious diseases before the delivery, and the result comes the day of the birth.
But in Fu’s case, the patient’s critical condition meant that she had to perform the delivery immediately, Fu said.
The patient’s family concealed her medical history and told Fu the patient had no infections. Fu, who had no time to take extra precautions, went into the operating room with an injured foot.
“From the doctor’s perspective, concealing infectious diseases is unfair,” Fu said.
But in some HIV patients’ eyes, disclosing their disease would jeopardize their access to healthcare as some hospitals may transfer them to designated infectious disease hospitals that offer inferior treatment.
Bi De, (pseudonym), 26, an AIDS patient who organized a debate in Shenzhen in November on whether HIV carriers should disclose their disease to doctors not treating their HIV, said he understood the ethical necessity to disclose one’s infections.
“But after my experience, I would not tell them [doctors] again,” Bi said. He first learnt he was HIV positive was two years ago when he went to a hospital in Henan Province to receive treatment for facial paralysis, and the hospital told him about his disease and transferred him to a designated hospital in Zhengzhou.
“But the infectious disease hospital did not have enough resources, and I finally recovered [from his paralysis]after visiting a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor,” Bi said.
In another high-profile case that came to light last year, an HIV-positive cancer patient sued a Tianjin hospital that refused to treat his cancer due to his HIV. The case was the first well-known case of an HIV carrier suing a hospital for discrimination.
After hearing of the case, then vice-premier Li Keqiang [now premier] immediately called for better treatment of HIV/AIDS patients.
But the Tianjin Hexi District Court last week rejected the case as the plaintiff failed to provide a legal basis for his claims, according to Beijing-based newspaper The Mirror.
Chinese media has reported many cases of hospitals delaying or refusing treatment to HIV carriers despite the regulation issued by the State Council in 2006 which stipulates that clinics and hospitals should not refuse or delay treatment for HIV/AIDS patients.
According to Xiang, hospitals should only transfer patients to designated infectious disease hospitals when their conditions could pose public health risks, such as if they have SARS or bird flu.
Shao Yiming, an AIDS expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times that hospitals are obliged to treat the diseases of HIV carriers.
“The HIV virus has a lower transmission level than many other infectious diseases such as hepatitis B. Why can they [doctors] treat [the disease] of hepatitis B carriers but not those of HIV carriers?” Shao said.
By the end of 2013, the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS hit 810,000 in China, according to the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention.
Shao suggested the country should put the related laws into practice while making more effort to promote knowledge of HIV/AIDS among medical staff and society.
Safety protection awareness
Xiang’s hospital laid out protection guidelines for medical staff to minimize their exposure to infectious diseases, but many are reluctant to adopt them.
“For example, some doctors following extra safety protection guidelines have to wear two sets of gloves, which they believe affect their surgical performance,” Xiang said.
Who should pay for the safety protection equipment in a long run is another headache for Xiang.
As the government subsidy does not cover it, hospitals that make an insufficient profit find it difficult to afford the equipment, he said.
“Some hospitals would not even pay for their medical workers to have a hepatitis B vaccine,” He said.
But Fu, who has performed gynecological surgeries on two HIV carriers after she was exposed, has been extra careful since the exposure.
“I wear special masks to prevent the blood splashing, safety protection suits, shoes and other extra safety protection equipment when I perform surgeries,” she said.
Canada: Judge rules that police violated constitutional rights by disclosing man's HIV status in press release
An Oshawa judge’s decision to sentence a man to house arrest for Internet child luring rather than jail because police publicly revealed his HIV status is the latest example of judges finding creative ways to manoeuvre around mandatory minimum sentences.
Former youth pastor Kris Gowdy was given two years less one day house arrest and three years’ probation last week by Ontario Court Justice Michael Block rather than the mandatory minimum sentence of one year in jail. Justice Block found Durham Regional Police violated Mr. Gowdy’s constitutional rights when they indicated in a news release shortly after his arrest in August 2012 that he was HIV-positive.
The story of the “HIV-positive ex-youth pastor” made headlines around the world, causing significant emotional trauma to Mr. Gowdy, Justice Block wrote in his decision.
“Mr. Gowdy had a right to make his own choices concerning the disclosure of his HIV status,” he wrote. “No doubt he would have chosen his own method and different timing if he ever determined to inform those near to him. Absent evidence of serious risk of transmission and rigorous compliance with statute, no one had the authority to make that decision for him.”
South Africa: Forced or involuntary disclosure in healthcare settings disproportionately affecting women resulting in discrimination and gender-based violence, despite constitutional protections
Editor’s note: This story is part of a Special Report produced by The GroundTruth Project called “Laws of Men: Legal systems that fail women.” It is produced with support from the Ford Foundation. Reported by Tracy Jarrett and Emily Judem.
An HIV diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, thanks to advances in medicine and treatment in the last 30 years. But stigma against HIV/AIDS and fear of discrimination still run strong in South Africa, despite legal protections, as well as drastically improved treatment, prevention techniques and education. Today an estimated 19 percent of South African adults ages 15-49 are living with HIV.
And women, who represent about 60 percent of people living with HIV in South Africa, face a disproportionately large array of consequences, including physical violence and abuse.
“Upon disclosure of women’s HIV positive status,” reads a 2012 study by the AIDS Legal Network on gender violence and HIV, “women’s lives change, due to fear and the continuum of violence and abuse perpetrated against them.”
Although forced or involuntary disclosure of one’s HIV status — along with any discrimination that may result from that disclosure — was made illegal by South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, experts and advocates say that public knowledge of these laws is limited and the legal system is not equipped to implement them.
Not only are women disproportionately affected by HIV, but they are also more likely to know their status. More women get tested, said Rukia Cornelius, community education and mobilization manager at the NGO Sonke Gender Justice, based in Johannesburg and Cape Town, because unlike men, women need antenatal care.
And often, she said, clinics give women HIV tests when they come in for prenatal visits.
The way hospitals and clinics are set up also are not always conducive to protecting privacy, said Alexandra Muller, researcher at the School of Public Health and Family Medicine at the University of Cape Town.
“People who provide services in the public system, at the community level, are community members,” said Muller. “This is an important dynamic when we think about stigma and disclosure.”
Doctors and nurses can see 60 to 80 patients per day in an overcrowded facility with shared consultation rooms, Muller said.
“There’s not a lot of consideration for how is a clinic set up,” added Cornelius, so that “a health care worker who has done your test and knows your status doesn’t shout across the room to the other health care worker, ‘okay, this one’s HIV-positive, that file goes over there.’”
Once HIV-positive women disclose their status, willingly or not,they are disproportionately affected by stigma because of the direct link between HIV and gender violence.
Uganda: HIV Prevention and Management Act should be seen in context with Anti-Pornography Act, Anti-Homosexuality Act and Narcotics Law says OSF
On November 20, Uganda’s parliament passed the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Bill, also known as the Narcotics Law. A draconian piece of legislation, the law purports to deter drug abuse by imposing inhumanely long prison sentences-a conviction for simple possession can land a person in a cell for 25 years.
Sex, criminal law & HIV non-disclosure: What is wrong with Canada’s approach to HIV non-disclosure? (Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, 2014)
This is the second of two short videos from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network explaining what the law currently is relating to HIV non-disclosure (covered in Part 1) and what is wrong with this approach. Watch Part 1 here: http://bit.ly/1oMs1DM
The Criminalization of HIV in Canada
(32 mins, BearPaw Media, Canada, 2014)
The Canadian Aboriginal population is one of the fastest growing groups being diagnosed with HIV today. Due to a lack of education, people living with HIV continue to face fear and discrimination. Court and legislator involvement in their lives makes matters even more complicated. This video features four Aboriginal Canadians diagnosed with HIV. In hearing their stories, the viewer will learn how they cope with the stigma surrounding their illness and live within the new rules governing the most intimate part of their lives.
See more at: http://ncsa.libguides.com/bearpawvideos
Canada: Social media campaign ‘Think Twice’ uses video to ask gay men to reconsider pressing charges for HIV non-disclosure
Last week saw the launch of a new phase of a targeted social marketing campaign by AIDS ACTION NOW! (AAN) that features 42 short videos from members and allies of Toronto’s LGBTQI community.
‘Think Twice’ asks HIV-negative and untested gay, bi, queer and trans men to reconsider pressing charges for HIV non-disclosure (where there was no alleged HIV transmission) when they discover that a sexual partner has not disclosed their HIV-positive status before sex.
In October 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that non-disclosure of known HIV status can be charged as aggravated sexual assault – with up to life imprisonment and sex offender registration – even if the person with HIV uses a condom: in order to avoid legal liability, they must also have a low viral load.
‘Think Twice’ is an AAN campaign originally launched just prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling aimed at decreasing the number of criminal prosecutions related to HIV non-disclosure. AAN want people involved in the criminalisation of HIV non-disclosure—people living with HIV, their sexual partners, police, Crown prosecutors, health care providers and others—to consider the complexity and uncertainty of Canada’s overly broad approach to HIV criminalisation, and the implications of their role in criminal prosecutions for HIV non-disclosure.
The first part of their campaign targeted Crown prosecutors since they play a pivotal role in driving criminal prosecutions.
Since December 2012, the ‘Think Twice’ campaign has also focused on another key advocacy target – potential complainants.
This new phase of the ‘Think Twice’ campaign focuses specifically on gay, queer, and trans men and other men who have sex with men, due a change in community norms in the past few years that has resulted in an increase in the numbers of men going to the police to lay charges against other men living with HIV.
According to the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, while the majority of cases in Canada are against men who had sex with women, an increasing number of gay men and other men who have sex with men are being charged and prosecuted in Canada. Whereas there were only five known cases prior to 2006, a further 25 cases have been tracked up to December 2013.
In 2014, there has been at least one new case against a gay man. Another – where two men met in a Montreal sauna – dating back to 2005, is due to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada next month.
For this latest phase of the ‘Think Twice’ campaign, AAN placed an open call for gay, queer, bi and trans men, and their allies, to make a video that answered the question: ‘In 45 seconds what would you say to gay men to convince them to think twice before going to the police when a sex partner hasn’t disclosed to them.’
Although they only expected to make 25, a total of 42 individuals made videos, in a project organised by Jordan Bond-Gorr, Lauryn Kronick, Tim McCaskell and Eric Mykhalovskiy and filmed by multi-disciplinary artist, John Caffery, in Toronto over one weekend in August.
The videos – along with the website www.thinktwicehiv.com – were launched on 18th November at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times theatre.
This compilation of 18 of the videos, produced by the HIV Justice Network, highlights the breadth of messages and the range of stakeholders involved.
It features (in order of appearance):
and John Greyson.
For more information about this campaign, visit the ‘Think Twice’ FAQ page.
[Feature] Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation
Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation
A pre-conference meeting for AIDS 2014
In July 2014, at a meeting held to just prior to the International AIDS Conference in Melbourne, Australia around 150 participants from all regions of the world came together to discuss the overly broad use of the criminal law to control and punish people living with HIV – otherwise known as ‘HIV criminalisation’.
The meeting was hosted by Living Positive Victoria, Victorian AIDS Council/Gay Men’s Health Centre, National Association of People Living with HIV Australia and the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, with the support of AIDS and Rights Alliance of Southern Africa, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Global Network of People Living with HIV, HIV Justice Network, International Community of Women Living with HIV, Sero Project and UNAIDS.
The meeting was financially supported by the Victorian Department of Health and UNAIDS.
This highlights video (12 mins, 50 secs) was directed, filmed and edited by Nicholas Feustel, with interviews and narration by Edwin J Bernard. The video was produced by georgetown media for the HIV Justice Network.
Download the highlights video from:http://vimeo.com/hivjustice/beyondblame
Below is a feature story based on the transcript of the highlights video, with additional links and information. You can also read Felicita Hikuam’s excellent (and remarkably quickly-written) summary of the day in ‘Mujeres Adelante’ and Daniel Reeders’s impressive collection of tweets from the meeting.
FEATURE STORY
A day to come together, find solutions, and move forward
Paul Kidd: On behalf of Living Positive Victoria, the Victorian AIDS Council, Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, and the National Association of People with HIV Australia, welcome to Beyond Blame: Challenging HIV Criminalisation. We hope today’s event is inspiring and productive and that it kicks off the discussion about HIV criminalisation that will continue through the week and beyond.
Edwin Bernard: I think this is the largest HIV Criminalisation Pre-Conference to date at an International AIDS Conference. So the idea of the meeting is to bring people together. People who are working on this issue, who are interested in learning more about it, and we’re going to really work hard to come together, find solutions, and move forward.
Julian Hows: GNP+ has been involved in this issue of criminalisation since 2002, 2003, when we noticed an increase in the rates of prosecution in Europe effectively and started the first scan of the 53 signatory countries of the European Convention on Human Rights.
This has since become the Global Criminalisation Scan, an international ‘clearing-house’ of resources, research, and initiatives on punitive laws and policies impacting people living with HIV.
Jessica Whitbread: And ICW are really, really excited to be here and part of this. Criminalisation is a huge issue for us. Over 50% of people living with HIV are women and many of these laws initially and still continue to be created as a way to protect women when actually they put us more at risk.
Getting the criminal law changed and out of the HIV response
The meeting began with a surprise announcement by the Minister of Health for Victoria, David Davis, about Australia’s only HIV-specific criminal law, Section 19A of the Victorian Crimes Act. Read more about the campaign to reform the law here.
David Davis: And as a further step in our efforts to reduce the impact of HIV and reduce stigma and discrimination, the coalition government will amend section 19A of the Crimes Act 1958 to ensure that it is non-discriminatory.
Following the announcement Victoria’s Shadow Health Minister, Gavin Jennings, committed to removing (and not just amending) Section 19A within the next 12 months, should Labor win the state election in November.
A keynote address by the Honourable Michael Kirby, a former Justice of the High Court of Australia, and a member of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, reminded us why an overly broad criminal justice apporach to prevention does more harm than good.
Michael Kirby: In the big picture of this great world epidemic, the criminal law has a trivial role to play. What is most important is getting the law changed and out, not getting the law into the struggle against HIV and AIDS.
The Iowa example: laws are subject to change and should be subject to change
The meeting then focused on Iowa in the United States where both law reform and judicial rulings have limited the overly broad use of the criminal law.
Matt McCoy: You know, in Iowa, we had a very bad law on the books, but it’s not unlike a lot of other places in the country in the United States and in the world. So there was no need for transmission, and with it, the penalty was so extreme, a mandatory lifetime sex offender registry and 25 years in prison.
Watch the video that Senator McCoy showed at the meeting explaning how law reform in Iowa happened.
Sean Strub: Iowa is a conservative farm-belt state. And the effort there began with a small group of people with HIV who started organising others with HIV and educating their own communities and then educating public health officials and reframing the issue in terms of a public health issue rather than simply an issue of justice for people with HIV. Last month, we held a conference at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. It was the first national conference on HIV criminalisation in the US. The Friday before our conference began, Governor Branstad in Iowa signed a criminalisation reform measure and made Iowa the first state in the United States to subtantively reform and modernise their statute.
Two videos of the HIV Is Not A Crime conference (also known as the Grinnell Gathering) are available. One shows the opening ceremony and can be viewed on the Sero website. A second video highlights the voices of US HIV criminalisation survivors featured at the meeting, and can be viewed on the Sero website.
Nick Rhoades: About a week after the conference was over, the timing was just a little bit off, nonetheless, it’s fantastic. My conviction was overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court. Yeah. Thank you… It’s kinda groundbreaking, their decision, and I, first of all, think that it’s going to have an effect beyond Iowa’s borders, but it basically said that there has to be more than a theoretical chance of transmission to be prosecuted under the law. And previously, that’s not been the case. Basically, it was just if you didn’t disclose, and you had sex, that that would be enough to convict someone. So, for the first time, they basically said that factors such as using protection, being on antiretroviral medication, having an undetectable viral load specifically, should affect whether or not prosecution is able to happen.
Senator McCoy took the opportunity to urge parliamentarians to rethink how they treat HIV in a criminal context.
Matt McCoy: Many of these laws went into effect in the United States during the AIDS crisis and the scares that society had around the issue, and in many cases they were put into effect using a one-size-fits-all measure. And so this is a great opportunity to go back and to revisit that and to realise that our laws are subject to change and should be subject to change.
Science can change laws and limit prosecutions
A number of countries in Europe have also recently revisited their criminal laws, policies or practices. A poster, Developments in criminal law following increased knowledge and awareness of the additional prevention benefit of antiretroviral therapy, presented at AIDS 2014 by the HIV Justice Network, showed where and how this has taken place.
Edwin Bernard: We have to salute the Netherlands, the very first place in the world that actually, way before the Swiss statement, between 2004 and 2007, managed to change the application of the law through a variety of Supreme Court rulings, but also because of advocacy that happened with advocates and healthcare workers and people in the community who limited the role of the criminal law to only intentional exposure or transmission. Denmark was the only country in Western Europe that had an HIV-specific criminal law, and a huge amount of advocacy went on behind the scenes and that law was suspended in 2011 based on the fact that the law was about a serious, life-threatening illness, and the reality was that in Denmark, people living with HIV have exactly the same life expectancy as people without HIV. And so the law just couldn’t apply anymore. And so, we hope that the places like Denmark and the Netherlands will provide inspiration for the rest of us.
Urgent need to focus on global South
But with two-thirds of all HIV-specific criminal laws enacted in the global South, there is now an urgent need to re-focus our efforts.
Patrick Eba: For a long time, we have been saying that there is no prosecution happening in the Global South, particularly in Africa, because we were lacking the information to be able to point to those instances of criminalisation. In fact, there is a lot of prosecution that is happening, and in the past year, if you look at the data that is being maintained by the HIV Justice Network, it is clear. We’ve seen the case in Uganda. We know of a decision that came out some time late last year in South Africa. We know of a number of cases in Kenya, in Gabon, in Cameroon [and especially in Zimbabwe]; and these really show that where we celebrate and are able today to know what is happening in the Global North, our lack of understanding of the situation in the Global South is one that requires more attention.
Dora Musinguzi: Uganda is right now grappling with lots of human rights and legal issues, and it’s going to be such a high climb to really convince our governments, our people, government agencies to make sure that we really have this reform of looking at HIV from a human rights angle, public [health] angle, gender justice angle, if we are going to achieve the gains that we have known to achieve as a country. …But we stand strong in this, we are not giving up. We are looking to a future where we shall challenge this criminalisation, and we hope to come back with a positive story.
Workshops on advocacy messages, science and alternatives to a punitive criminal justice approach
After the morning plenary sessions, participants then attended one of three workshops. The first workshop explored how to get advocacy messages right, in terms of what arguments need to be delivered by whom and to whom.
Laurel Sprague: We talked about the importance of stories. In particular, the stories of people who have been prosecuted, both because of the dignity it gives them to be able to share their own experience, and also because what we’re seeing is so broadly understood to be disproportionate once the details come out.
Laurel’s rapporteur notes can be downloaded in full here. For an example of advocacy messagaging aimed at communities impacted by HIV see this video from Queensland Positive People.
A second workshop highlighted the way that up-to-date science on HIV-related risks has limited the application of the criminal law in Sweden and Canada.
David Mejia-Canales: Really mobilising their scientists, their researchers and really connecting with the lawyers, the judiciary, the prosecutors and putting to them the best evidence that they have.
Download the Powerpoint presentation given by Cecile Kazatchine of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network here.
The third workshop examined alternatives to a punitive criminal justice system approach, and the risks and benefits of using, for example, public health law or restorative justice.
Daniel Reeders: So if someone shows up at a police station or talks to their doctor about being exposed or infected with HIV, a restorative justice approach would talk about giving them an opportunity to work that issue through with the person who they are otherwise trying to report, either for criminal prosecution or public health management. It acknowledges that people experience HIV infection as an injury and that there is a lack of a process offering them an opportunity to heal.
Daniel’s entire rapporteur report can be read on his blog.
Going home with more ideas and tools and inspiration to continue our work
As the meeting came to a close participants appreciated the day as a rare and much needed opportunity to discuss advocacy strategies.
Paul Kidd: What a day! It is just so amazing to be in this room with all of these incredible people and the sense you have of how much passion and energy and commitment there is around this issue.
Richard Elliott: Even as we face numerous setbacks in our own context sometimes, we see that in fact people are making breakthroughs elsewhere and then that helps us put pressure domestically on decision makers, on legislators, on judges.
Michaela Clayton: It’s important to learn from how people have achieved successes and what have been peoples’ problems in achieving successes in different countries in addressing criminalisation. So for us it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn from others.
Dora Musinguzi: I was encouraged to know that the struggle is not only for us in Africa, in Uganda, and I was also encouraged to know that our colleagues have made progress, and so we can.
Sean Strub: I think everywhere that there is an effort for this advocacy for reform, it is a constantly evolving effort. And the fact that the HIV Justice Network and others brought together this global community which is incredibly mutually supportive. I think of any aspect of the epidemic, I can’t think of an area where there is more collegiality and mutual respect than those of us who’ve centered our work around criminalisation reform. That’s what we’re seeing here in Melbourne, just an expansion of that, and all of us going home with more ideas and tools and inspiration to continue our work.
To remain connected with the global advocacy movement against overly broad HIV criminalisation, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and sign the Oslo Declaration on HIV Criminalisation to join our mailing list.