Teenager with HIV blasts school sex education

A HIV-positive teenager has hit out at sex education in schools, claiming he learned nothing about the disease whilst at high school and if he had, he might have been more equipped to understand the main risks involved with contracting it.

Luke Alexander, 19, appeared on ITV’s This Morning programme, speaking to Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, called for more awareness about HIV – one year on after being given the devastating diagnosis.

Mr Alexander feels so strongly about the subject he has written an open letter to health secretary Michael Gove, arguing that it should be made compulsory in schools for lessons to be conducted on the virus. The letter was posted online as a petition on the Change.org website, where he claimed that the ‘vast majority of young people today have little or no common knowledge’, of the virus.

He says: “When they diagnosed me last year, my first reaction was “Oh my God, I’m going to die”. I knew it existed but I didn’t know a lot about treatment.”

Mr Alexander added he came out as gay at the tender age of 13 and then was sexually active from the age of 15. After losing his job at 18, his life spiralled out of control as he became dependant on alcohol and drugs, admitting he ‘went off the rails’ during this point.

He became more careless in his sex life yet says he can ‘count on one hand’ the times he has had sex without using a condom – showing it only takes just one occasion of unsafe sex for any sexually transmitted infection to pass from one person to the next.

However, Mr Alexander has criticised the lack of focus on HIV at school and explained the sex education lessons he received mainly focused on the risk of becoming pregnant and contracting chlamydia. He added there should have been more explanation about the importance of wearing condoms to safeguard against the disease as well as other STIs such as genital herpes and gonorrhoea.
“We did talk about condoms,” he said. “But it was more in the context of getting pregnant and bacterial infections. We never really went into anything else. I have always known it was necessary (to use a condom) but it wasn’t stressed (in the context of HIV).”

During a trip to Manchester in April 2013, Mr Alexander began to show the symptoms of the disease. He says: “All of a sudden I came down with a horrific fever, it was very instant, I had sweats and could not sleep. The next thing I knew I was off my food and very, very fatigued. It was awful.”

Then a month later whilst attending a Birmingham Gay Pride event, he was offered a free sexual test, which he duly accepted and thought nothing of it. However, he started to worry when a phone call informed him there was ‘cause for concern’, leading to an agonising five day wait, when the diagnosis was given – he was HIV positive.

Mr Alexander said he did not ‘get the information I felt I needed at the time’ during his high school years.

“Being gay, HIV is up there on the list of things affecting men across the world. We heard a lot about chlamydia and pregnancy but nothing in much depth, the teachers were embarrassed to talk about it. I felt they were speaking about it because they had to, because the government were telling them to. But it left no impression.”

Dr Ranj Singh, who accompanied Mr Alexander on This Morning, commented that stats released by the National Aids Trust last month showed a ‘shockingly low’ level of knowledge about HIV in young gay men – and even worse in older men. Dr Sing added that around 100,000 people in the UK have the virus, but as many as 20,000 are unaware they have it.

A Department of Education spokesman commented: “Pupils must learn about sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS as part of sex and relationship education.”

Online Pharmacy give away 1,000s of condoms in the run up to World AIDS Day

Shocking figures released ahead of World AIDS Day on 1 December reveal that roughly a fifth of those who have HIV in the UK, are unaware they are even carrying the virus.

Public Health England accumulated data from 2012 that shows 21,900 people out of 98,400 with HIV in the UK do not know they have it, with new cases reported in gay mean spiralling to an all-time record of 3,250 during last year.

Gay men account for the majority of people who have HIV, followed by black African men and women. Heterosexuals accounted for approximately 45% of new HIV cases in 2012; 2,880 in total.

Although it appears overall figures have decreased since 2011, the charity Terrence Higgins Trust have called for more action to be done to prevent the virus spreading, beginning with National HIV Testing Week, which runs from 22-29 November leading up to World AIDS Day.

World AIDS Day is an annual event dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection, and has been supported numerous times by Medical Specialists Pharmacy, and this year is no different.

This year Medical Specialists are giving away literally thousands of Skins condoms to all patients who obtain any sexual health products between 22 November and 2 December. Whether this be a clamelle chlamydia test kit, the antibiotic azithromycin for chlamydia and gonorrhoea treatment, or viagra, you will receive plenty of condoms…for free!

“Reducing undiagnosed HIV is now the single most important step we can take to halt the spread of infection in this country,” said the Terrence Higgins Trust’s acting chief executive, Paul Ward.

Mr Ward added: “Some communities are already making headway in this. Among gay men, testing rates are up, diagnoses are up, and as a result undiagnosed infection is coming down. Because of community-wide initiatives like National HIV Testing Week, hundreds more people with HIV now know their status, helping them access life-saving treatments and drastically reducing the chance of them passing the virus on. We’ve come so far, but we have to keep going. We know testing works and treatment works; all we need is the individual commitment and public funding to make it happen. If we can get this, we can turn the tide of the epidemic.”

Many people see ‘HIV’ as an abbreviated disease that they hope they never contract, whilst not actually understanding a lot about what it is, who is at risk, or the dangers of letting the virus go untreated.

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) attacks the immune system; our body’s natural defence mechanism against infections and disease. Health Protection Agency statistics from 2010 showed 95% of UK diagnoses stemmed from sexual contact, typically not wearing a condom during sexual activity is the cause. Sharing infected needles, syringes or other drug paraphernalia are also risk factors for HIV.

After infection, symptoms usually take between two to six weeks to arise and they include the common flu symptoms such as fever, sore throat, tiredness, muscular pain and also you could develop a body rash. If you believe you might be at risk then you should go for a test immediately and do not delay.
Delaying vital critical treatment can be fatal and somebody diagnosed at a late stage is actually nine times more likely to die within twelve months of receiving their diagnosis compared to somebody who gets tested and diagnosed at an early stage.

If HIV is left untreated or insufficiently managed, HIV then develops into AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). At this stage the body is no longer able to fight off life-threatening infections due to the severe damage inflicted to the immune system.

National HIV testing week is a hugely important week and Medical Specialists hope that people shed the stigmas attached to HIV and AIDS, and to get tested immediately if they think they might be at risk. There is never any shame in seeking help for anything, especially when it comes to your health, and it could just save your life.