Have you ever wondered why some homepages or sites exist or the reason for their existence? I asked myself that same question over and over, and I am sure that some of you who visit us are asking the same. So the issue I'd like to address here is about our goals and why this page exists at all.If you still reading, I bet you want to know also.
We first started this page as something we want to do for fun and show the world what we can do, as members of the IRC #GamTH channel. I do believe that "WE", as a group, can do more than
some people ever think thanks to BatSiam and his ideas, and the many hours spent on designing this homepage from the beginning.
We are now more than one year old and we are still growing, and that sure tells us something. This pages are important to many of you (and us) and need to continue to get better. When many Thai's can gather together to exchange thoughts, gossip, and their good times and bad, we have a good place to call home.
There are more ideas and other things that we need to address, and there are more things to talk about than just gossip or meeting new friends who are just coming out. Many of our friends who are just coming out are just trying to accept themselves and are having a hard time dealing with it. So we think there are somethings we need to do here. We are not very experienced or have a lot of
knowledge in this world, and we are still learning. We do believe that there are things we can share as a group and help each other out, in one way or another.
There are many other gay support groups and homepages that providing information in many ways, and I do believe that many of us who have read and use their useful information find it helpful.
So the real question is, why do we need to create another homepage to offer support?
Since we are Thai, many issues and information on these homepages and support groups are not what Thai's really think or don't address what really happens inThailand, our nice little country. Does that tell you something about our goal? We do like to share our little world with everybody, but we need an understanding between Thai's and foreigners who both live in Thailand and other countries around the world.
Right now, in our meeting, we haveaddressed a few goals and hopes with our friends who can help us reach this goal. Let me list the goals we think should be most important as we update our homepage.
- To provide support for Gay males in Thailand, both for teenagers just coming out and gay friends already out, relating to different topics and matters of being gay inThailand.
- To make available information about gay news and what is happening in Thailand
- To give information about STDs, especially AIDS, and how to protect yourself and others and how to prevent these diseases, and to offer friendship to those who already suffer from these diseases.
- To help gay parents or parents with gay children better understand each other, and ideas on dealing with this problem.
- To help gay foreigners understand life in Thailand, and help them understand the customs of our country.
- To exchange information between different groups of gays in Thailand and other countries.
- To organize meetings and provide a place to meet to better understand who "WE" are in this group.
Also if you would like to share your experiences with others, you can e-mail us at the same e-mail address shown above. Concerning the experience -- please note that this is not your first time experience or anything in that catagory -- Anything you share with us will be screened for content and whether your thoughts will be shared in the homepage or not, we will e-mail back and let you know. If you feel strongly that it will be helpful for the other visitors, we will listen to you. We do hope we will get help from you as others may need to hear your ideas and thoughts.
Remember, we are a family and we are here to help each other in any way that we can, because a family needs each other.That is our goal of providing helpful information.
Remember we do not want to be the place you visit, read and then leave. Your comments and thoughts need to be shared and can be very helpful for others who are just coming out and experienced members also.
One other thing, most of us here are only volunteers and do not know "perfect English", so if you like to point out our misspelling, we would be greatful, but please understand that English is not our first language and not even a second language for many of us, so be kind when you correct our mistakes. Thank you and have a wonderful time cruising our homepage.
KjBoy
Men ignore the early signs of even serious illnesses, they indulge in more hazardous behaviour, and especially when young, take more risks with their health, well-being and lives. They smoke, may drink a lot, take recreational drugs, have more risky sex.
Let's look at alcohol and drugs, both of which lower inhibitions so that behaviour becomes unpredictable, there is an increased chance of risk taking, emotions and feelings take charge. When of drunk or stoned on drugs people do things that other-wise they would not do. Now this may not matter very much, very often, but there are times when it matters a great deal.
We all enjoy sex and take enjoyment in receiving and in giving pleasure. Sex is one of the fundamental elements to a fulfilled and happy life. But sex has always carried risks with the chance of contracting a life threatening illness. For hundreds of years the risk came from syphilis, which has killed millions of people, it usually took many years, but eventually syphilis prevailed. And for most of those centuries there was no cure for syphilis, so all those who contracted the infection died from it.
Today there are new dangers lurking in the pleasures of sex, (or of intravenous drug use). HIV and AIDS are new diseases, only known of for the last 15 or so years, yet everywhere this virus has had devastating effects upon people, families, communities, and whole countries. Africa has been experiencing the full effects of the epidemic for longer than most other continents. And Africa is where it has its most devastating effects. The majority of those affected by HIV and AIDS in western countries are intravenous drug users and homosexual men. Those affected in Africa and other regions of the world are straight men and women. But the often hidden incidence of homosexual behaviour should not be ignored in the spread of HIV infection. The United Nations organisation - UNAIDS - claims that 10% of all new HIV infections result from homosexual sex.
South East Asia was late to be effected by HIV and AIDS, but the region is now facing the full effects of this pandemic. And it must be questioned what the eventual effects of HIV and AIDS will have upon the countries and populations of the region. If the experience of Africa is repeated then large areas may be depopulated, families, and countries will face economic misfortune.
Already in south and South East Asia there are now 5.3 million people living with HIV, these are just the people who are known to be infected. Two countries make up the majority of this pool of infection - India and Thailand
I am not of South East Asian origin, but I have a number of friends who are Indian and Thai. I also occasionally teach senior health, education and civil servants from countries of S.E. Asia, and Africa. I do this on a specialised international HIV/AIDS course at my university. Most course participants have an open mind and understand the problems that their governments and populations may face. There are others, however, who are unwilling to face the problem and even deny a problem exists. This is particularly so when confronted with the idea of homosexual sex, of drug users or of male and female prostitutes. For any country to deny the fact of these groups existence is a route to trouble, because they will overlook a significant pool of infection.
But things can be done to stop the progress of the disease and some countries both in Africa and in South East Asia are fighting the battle and winning it. Uganda particularly has shown what can be done to educate people and reduce the spread of the infection, to a mainly rural and poorly educated population. But there remains much to be done. Thailand too is showing some encouraging signs of its ability to reduce the incidence of HIV infection and spread. But in both the developed and developing world, there remains much to be done, because fighting the battle against this infection may take many years, and we may never entirely win the war, but the fight must go on. There is a limited range of strategies that can be brought into play in this war, and most do not depend upon high-tech care or treatments from the cutting edge of pharmacology. Most of the strategies will depend on people.
In future
writings I hope to be looking at safer sex, sex education, the role of
culture, new treatments and perhaps more.
X
X
In the developing world it is different, the epidemic is still rapidly advancing in the countries of South East Asia. There are many reasons for this continued spread; lack of sexual health education, cultures where men are traditionally dominant over women, the presence of sexual exploitation of both boys and girls, and the incidence of alcohol and drug abuse, and in some cases devastating poverty.
Now these things are not confined to sub-Saharan Africa or to South East Asia; western countries suffer from these problems too. But the infra-structure of health care and education is more established in the richer industrialised world. This makes it easier to give positive health messages - but of course, these messages may be ignored.
The annual cost of about 15,000 US dollars for combination therapy is more than many Asian countries have for one person’s annual health budget. So the only realistic solution to the problem in South East Asia is by educating the sexually active population and those people who take intra-venous drugs.
But for now, let’s consider combination therapy. How does combination therapy work? Well there are many different types of drugs that can be taken to reduce the amount of HIV virus in a persons body (the viral load). Most of these drugs act in a similar way to each other. They aim to stop the virus reproducing itself, they do this each drug stops HIV reproduction at different parts of its cycle. So let’s say that a person living with HIV/AIDS is taking three or four different drugs in his/her combination therapy regime. Each of these drugs will produce an effect at a different point in the reproductive phase of the virus. The aim is to kill as much of the virus as is possible, and preferably to very low levels that the virus becomes undetectable to the tests.
But being undetectable does not mean that the body is completely free of the HIV virus. What is does mean is that the viral load is so low that it can’t be detected by whatever test method is being used. There are three or four different ways of testing for HIV in blood, and each test is sensitive to different levels of the virus, so it is possible for one test to show an undetectable level of virus, but another test will show some viruses, even using the same blood sample. In other words, even though the virus may come up as undetectable on one test, there are still virus particles living in the body tissues and in the blood, and they are still reproducing. If the same blood sample is tested using a different method, then it is possible that some viruses will be shown to be present.
The HIV virus is notorious for its ability to mutate, it changes its genetic structure, very subtly, so that it becomes resistant to the drugs that are used to fight it. Of course, this means that the virus is not then sensitive to the treatment, and it is a matter of starting from scratch again. But here too there is a problem. The best results from combination therapy are gained in so called ‘drug naive’ patients; those patients who have not had any previous treatment for their infection. It is these people who suffer the least treatment failure rate.
What then causes treatment failure? To maintain a long course of combination therapy is a tough job, involving taking very many tablets every day; this is not an easy thing to face. The side effects of the tablets can be severe, from loss of appetite to diarrhoea, nausea and vomiting and worse. While forgetting to take the tablets is common. When people living with HIV/AIDS fail to take the tablets that gives the virus a chance to mutate into a different strain of the virus, which will reproduce itself. This affects the efficiency of the combination therapy, in that the drugs will not be effective against the new mutated strain. So the cycle of trying new and different combinations of drugs starts from base. Figures from Britain and America suggest that a treatment failure rate of between 30-50% can be expected.
Those people who failed to adhere to their drug programme, or couldn’t cope with the side effects are now struggling to find successful drug combinations. This fact is significant for some newly infected people. Doctors fear that the newly infected person will have a greater risk of acquiring a drug resistant strain of HIV, if the infection was acquired from someone on combination therapy. So combination therapy for the newly infected person will be less effective Obviously this will make the search for even more powerful drugs more difficult.
Taking recreational drugs like ecstasy, speed, heroin, valium, anabolic steroids will produce interactions with the anti-HIV drugs. These interactions will produce unwanted side-effects which can range from increased potency of the drug, to convulsions, and coma. In the case of anabolic steroids there may be excess testosterone production, leading to increased anger and aggression, mood swings, liver and kidney damage, hair loss, and many more effects. Taking recreational or body enhancing drugs is not a good idea when coupled with combination therapy.
The history of HIV/AIDS has been one of constant change, with science trying to keep pace with the vagaries of this changeable virus. It has been one of alternating despair and hope, depression and elation. Improvements in the drug regime, in the dosage rates, reduction in side effects, and toxicity are all feasible. And sometime in the very near future scientist hope to bring on-stream technology which tests a patients resistance to drug treatment. So avoiding the trial and error of finding a suitable drug regime, and hopefully, hitting on a reasonable combination of drugs from the word go.
But for
the majority of people who will be infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in
the near and middle future all of this is purely academic. Because
their governments will not be able to afford any of the combination therapies,
patient compatibility tests or the expertise to administer them.
So for those people who run the risk of becoming infected with HIV the
only solution to the present problem is to educate them into safer sex
techniques and into safer ‘shooting up’ methods
John Howe,
Lecturer,
University
of Wales College of Medicine,
School
of Nursing Studies,
JHowe97608@aol.com
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