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Health | Events

Life Ball 2008 in Vienna

On Saturday night, Hollywood actress Sharon Stone and Sex and the City star Kim Cattrall, rock legend Debbie Harry, and supermodel Linda Evangelista, joined several thousand "aliens" clad in feather boas and tight leather pants who descended on Vienna for the annual Life Ball AIDS charity event to raise money for HIV and Aids charities. Landing on Planet Life Ball was the theme of this year's event, celebrating the ball's 16th year with imagery of outer space and the concept of embracing the alien. Despite its sober topic, the AIDS charity is arguably the party of the year, attended by a long list of international celebrities who joined the approximately 4,000-strong partying crowd at Vienna's city hall. This year the British cult label Agent Provocateur ensured a sensual mixture of frivolous play, fetish chic and glamour on the Red Ribbon catwalk in front of the Vienna City Hall. More on Life Ball...

Source The Age

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Health | Events

Series | Health

Mitch Hewer naked for Everyman Campaign

Everyman and Cosmopolitan have worked together for seven consecutive years on the magazines ever-popular Celebrity Naked Centrefold feature. Each June for the past six years, a group of male celebrities are featured naked to help raise awareness of male cancer to the magazines female readers. The feature has proved so popular that Cosmopolitan now runs the centrefold feature throughout the year for Everyman, with a special edition in June. This month, Mitch Hewer who plays gay character Maxxie in British Channel 4's Series Skins (see previous posts) poses naked for the Everyman Campaign.

Everyman's mission is to cross out male cancer by making everyone recognise the tell-tale signs, and understand the importance of treating them. By increasing this awareness Everyman also hope to raise money to fund life-saving research.

Source Everyman

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Mitch Hewer | Series | Health | Skins

Society | Health

Gay couples Baby Boom

Michael Eidelman and A.J. Vincent (picture), who have lived together for years, invested love, time and all their savings to build their family in New York's Chelsea neighborhood. Each man is the biological father of one of their twins, who were born in Los Angeles, where the laws are less stringent for same-sex couples. "It is more rewarding than any other thing I have done in my life," said Eidelman, a 40-year-old dermatologist. To fulfill their dream of parenthood, the couple turned to Circle Surrogacy, a company that helps people find egg donors and host mothers and navigate through the legal and medical insurance process. When the company was launched, 10 percent of its clients were gay couples. Today, 80 percent are same-sex couples from 29 countries. "Actually, of the 250 or so couples we have helped, all but about four are still together, a less than two percent break up rate, as opposed to the national average of 50 percent," said Circle Surrogacy President John Weltman. The "gay baby boom" has made families with two fathers a common sight in New York City's daycare centers and parks, although gay couples legally marry only in one US state, Massachusetts. The process costs at least 100,000 dollars, with 25,000 dollars going to the surrogate mother and between 4,000 and 10,000 dollars of the egg donor. The rest goes to the agency, medical costs and legal fees. Coupled with adoption, the number of families with gay parents is growing. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, between one million and nine million children under the age of 18 have same-sex parents today.

Source AFP

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Society | Health

Health | Web

Take Care Down There Campaign

Planned Parenthood, whose mission is to provide, promote, and protect access to sexual and reproductive health care, has released a sexual education website with videos about condoms, STDs, abstinence and other sexual health topics at takecaredownthere.org. Watch I Didn't Spew video...

Source Take care Down there

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Health | Web

Health

HIV among Gay men in the UK

Gay men are being urged to get HIV tests more regularly and practise safe sex in a bid to halt the high numbers of new cases in the UK. The Health Protection Agency made the warning after new diagnoses among gay men topped 2,600 for the third year. HPA head of HIV surveillance Dr Valerie Delpech said: "Gay men continue to be the group most at risk of acquiring HIV within the UK. "We need to reinforce the safe sex message for gay men that the best way to protect yourself from contracting HIV is practising safe sex by using a condom with all new and casual partners." She also urged more regular testing so treatment could be started earlier and to reduce the risk of transmission to partners.

Source BBC News

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Health

Health | Ads

Brazilian Beauty Campaign against AIDS

Made in Brazil reports that the Brazilian government launched a new campaign against AIDS targeting young gay men, "Do whatever you want, but do it with a condom." The promotional material inspired by the movie American Beauty is beyond genius, and very sexy. It will attract attention for sure...

Source Made In Brazil

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Health | Ads

Health | Ads

I Love My Boo Campaign

Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) has launched two new public-service advertising campaigns to raise awareness about HIV for women of color (We're Not Taking it Lying Down) and young men of color who have sex with men (I Love My Boo). "These provocative new campaigns address rising HIV infection rates in two of the groups most directly impacted by focusing on the strength and resiliency of people of color within their communities," said Marjorie J. Hill, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of GMHC. "They speak to individuals and communities in a language of love, respect, acceptance and sexual health — highlighting what is possible in intimate relationships instead of focusing on problems with negotiating safer sex and getting tested for HIV." The I Love My Boo campaign addresses young men of color by recognizing their relationships without shame. The campaign shows everyday images of young men embracing, kissing, and expressing their love for each other in public spaces. By emphasizing trust, respect and commitment, it shows that with love and self-love come responsibility — the basis for safer sex and HIV prevention. These ads appear on billboards, phone booths and other highly visible structures in areas of Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn where statistics show a disproportionately high rate of black MSM and women with HIV. Dr. Marjorie Hill, CEO of Gay Men's Health Crisis, hopes the ads will have an impact in reducing the epidemic's impact in these areas.

Source Gay Men's Health Crisis

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Health | Ads

Health

Syphilis & other STDs among Gay Men

The rate of syphilis infection in U.S. men is six times that of women, and 64 percent of the male infections are in men who have sex with men. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the data at a March 12 news conference at the 2008 National STD Prevention Conference in Chicago. Men who are infected with HIV and are on therapy constitute a significant portion of those infections, historically, about half in some cities. John Douglas, director of STD prevention at the CDC, said part of the increase in syphilis among HIV-positive gay men may be due to their attitude. "They have already taken the big hit of getting a fatal disease and have survived it, there is the potential of seeing other STDs as a nuisance."
The CDC recommends that sexually active gay men be screened at least once a year for all sexually transmitted diseases, and high-risk individuals even more frequently. Those tests should include syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea in the penis, rectum, and throat. A gonorrhea infection in the urethra of the penis often is painful and so the person goes to a doctor for treatment. But infection in the throat or rectum often is asymptomatic or the symptoms are so mild that they are easily ignored.

Source The Bay Area Reporter

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Health

Health

Gays smoke more than Straights

Smoking rates among the gay and lesbian community in the UK are significantly higher than the general population. Around 40% of gays and lesbians smoke, as opposed to 23% of men and 24% of women in general population. Smoking kills more than 112,000 people in the UK each year, making it the country's biggest preventable killer. The gay, lesbian and bisexual community tend to smoke for different reasons and at an earlier age than heterosexual men and women.
Dan Tickle, chief executive of the charity No Smoking Day said: "No Smoking Day is the ideal opportunity to quit smoking and significantly improve the quality of your life. Why not take The Great No Smoking Day Challenge and stop smoking? Get support and help from your local stop smoking day and increase your chance of success by up to four times." No Smoking Day is Wednesday 12th March.

Source Pink News

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Health

Politics | Health

China to prevent HIV/AIDS among gays

Chinese authorities have launched their first anti-AIDS programme focused on gay men, amid rising concern that the disease is becoming more prevalent among homosexuals, state press reported Thursday. The programme has begun with efforts to learn more about gay lifestyles, the health ministry said, according to the China Daily, after decades of disbelief from the government that homosexuality was anything but a mental problem. "The programme aims to strengthen measures to prevent and control the deadly disease among the homosexual community," the China Daily quoted Wang Weizhen, a senior official with the ministry's HIV/AIDS prevention department, as saying. "By learning more about gay people, we can better protect them against this incurable disease. Studies are under way in several cities to collect information on gay men, such as their... behavioural patterns." The programme will also deliver special funding and technical support to gay men, Wang said, without giving further details. China's communist rulers for years deemed homosexuality as a psychological problem, and it was only in 2001 that being gay was removed from the official list of mental disorders.

Source AFP

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Politics | Health