Ms Deirdre Seery:

I will respond to the question on the reason people still get HIV. Contracting HIV is associated with risk. People still have unplanned crisis pregnancies. People have sex with others under the influence of alcohol and may not even remember whether they have had sex, let alone with whom they had it. It is associated with the culture.

For the person with HIV, there are issue around telling a sexual partner, does one tell him on the first date or at what stage does one tell him? This is one of the issues that our counsellors deal with all the time. For a person with HIV in the gay community, at what stage in a relationship does one tell the other person? If one divulges one's secret and the relationship does not go anywhere, will he tell other people? There is a significant issue around disclosure, whether people divulge their status or not. All of this impacts on whether people have risky or safe sex.

On the question of targeted information for men having sex with men, MSM, there is no one type of MSM. Many men who have sex with men are in an almost married civil partnership or monogamous relationship and are not on the scene. There are different scenes and what we in the Sexual Health Centre are doing to promote our rapid HIV testing is training advocates to be in all of the different scenes in order that wherever men are having sex, they will have access to somebody who will say to them that for their own health would it not be a good idea to go along and have a test. We have to get people out there to interact with others.

We published a very nice leaflet and distributed it all over the place. Of the 520 people who have come to the Sexual Health Centre for their rapid HIV testing in the past two years, not a single person came because of the leaflet. Although we spent a little bit of money on it and though it was a good thing, nobody came because of that leaflet. We have to analyse continually how people are hearing about our services. It is by word of mouth and the Internet.