MSM Community Symposium (Update – 1/3)
Over the weekend of June 28, 2014 we held our 2nd MSM Community Symposium – Time to Act forum.
The gay and MSM community is experiencing increasing numbers diagnosed with HIV infection every year. Many of the MSM who are diagnosed are young (29 years and below).
We took this opportunity for our stakeholders to unite, as a community, for a meeting to discuss the issue of HIV and MSM in Singapore and came up with some new & better ideas to stop the spread of the infection and to assist those with HIV/AIDS amongst us.
The first session of the presentation was the HIV/STIs done by Prof. Roy Chan (NSC), Dr. Martin Chio (NSC) and A/Prof. Lee Cheng Chuan (CDC). The second session was from the clinical services for MSM by Anwar Hashim (AFA), Paul Toh Club Genesis support group and Avin Tan (AFA) followed by our community support group for intervention and education with Bryan Choong (Oogachaga), Hafiz Muhd (SG Rainbow) and Nathan Renga (The Purple Alliance).
We had a great turn out to the our event and with so many new and familiar faces. We also took this chance to launch our very own MSM website Gayhealth.sg for the MSM community in Singapore. Please visit www.gayhealth.sgfor the site.
We would like to thank all our community members for coming since Pink Dot was also having their event as well.
Stay tuned for more updates and summary from the symposium.
The MSM Community Symposium was highly informative and a splendid platform for discussions on issues concerning HIV and the MSM Community in Singapore. The sharing and data presented gave good insights and updates to the situation in Singapore and more of such information should be shared with the masses so as to help create greater awareness of the problem at hand. The presence of the wide range of stakeholders was also important as they presented interesting ideas from different perspectives. The engagement of more organizations and evidence of collaboration among them also bodes well for everyone of us within the community who has an interest in the problems we face.
Kudos to the Organizers as well for the well thought-up programme and smooth execution of the event. Hopefully more and more people and groups can be exposed to such events in the future!
The MSM community symposium that I attended last Saturday was eye-opening and valuable to me. In my opinion, the flow of the event was well structured and it was run in an engaging and open atmosphere. What you can consider to do in the future is getting more participants involved and allocating more time for interactive session. Thank you for organizing this event and inviting me.