Caution on $10m HIV plan

AIDS groups have cautiously welcomed plans for a $10m national HIV prevention media campaign while questioning why the federal government has not acted sooner.

Federal health minister Tony Abbott announced this week he was considering the multi-million dollar mainstream media campaign, following a 41 percent increase in HIV notifications nationally between 2000 and 2005.

Abbott said the marketing campaign -“ expected to centre on national television advertising -“ would target gay men, who continue to report the great majority of HIV notifications, Australian Associated Press reported.

It would be one of the first HIV campaigns to appear on national TV since the shock tactics of the Grim Reaper ads in the late 1980s.

Abbott said the new campaign would promote responsible behaviour rather than using a fear-based approach.

We need a new marketing effort in this area, but I don’t think it should be another Grim Reaper campaign.

Abbott’s announcement follows a longstanding recommendation by the AIDS ministerial advisory committee headed by former health minister Michael Wooldridge.

Economics are also a motivation, with every new HIV infection estimated to cost about $500,000 in future drug expenses.

If we can spend $10 million or thereabouts and help prevent a couple of hundred people a year from coming down with HIV, that would be a very good investment, Abbott said.

AIDS groups have welcomed the commonwealth plans but say action should have come much earlier.

Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations executive director Don Baxter said a mainstream media campaign was a major recommendation of the fifth national HIV/AIDS strategy released a year late in mid-2005.

We’re coming up to this mid-term stocktake of the strategy and nothing has happened about that priority recommendation, as we’ve been pointing out for the last 12 months, Baxter told Sydney Star Observer.

We’ve had the strategy for 18 months now and there’s been no planning about this at all.

But Baxter said the advertising plan was welcome at a time when the gay community was spread across the country.

I think by carefully placing the ads in shows that we know have substantial audiences of gay men, then we could effectively use this $10 million, he said.

Market research commissioned by NSW Health indicates that these [shows] include Desperate Housewives, Queer As Folk, Will & Grace, The L Word and any Kylie special.

Baxter also urged Abbott to make good on his promise to avoid fear-based HIV messages.

That’s what really doesn’t work any more and I guess we have some concerns that that’s where conservative members of the federal cabinet may want it to go, he said.

ACON chief executive Stevie Clayton said the HIV announcement was a great move but it’s a long time coming.

And also, as with every time a politician speaks, you have to read between the lines, she said.

What Abbott has actually announced is some research in preparation for a large media campaign and that he will seek the $10 million in the next budget. It hasn’t even been allocated yet. We need to be a little bit cautious about it on that basis.

Clayton said a mainstream campaign could take HIV prevention messages to gay men and lesbians the community media did not reach.

This is the one real opportunity to see that really wide reach of an HIV prevention campaign.

It’s fantastic to have $10 million. But when you compare it to the amount of money they spend on one election campaign, it’s a really small amount.

The federal government also needed to look at issues other than safe sex that related to HIV infection, such as mental health and drug use, Clayton said.

It’s equally important that the commonwealth doesn’t think that if we put a campaign out there telling people to use condoms in 2007, then that [alone] is going to have a major impact on the epidemic amongst gay men.