HEART OF GOLD
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AfA has been steadfast in advocating and providing sexual health programmes and services for Men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) in Singapore. However, HIV infections remain high within the community with 59% of new infections in 2015 being among homosexuals and bisexuals (MoH, 2015).

2016 was a particularly challenging year for the MSM programme with no grants being made available for HIV prevention and testing.

Despite this, AfA sustained its efforts to reach out to the community with HIV prevention and testing services through innovative ways.

Gayhealth.sg

Gayhealth.sg continues to be one of the key channels for outreach. Started in 2014, it has established itself as a reliable hub of information for the MSM community on a variety of sexual health topics including

HIV and STI transmission and
Early testing and detection,
Substance abuse
PEP and PrEP
Relationships and
Living with HIV.

In 2016, gayhealth.sg was accessed 158,096 times and our social media platforms garnered over 300,000 views.

People Like Us

Officially released in 2016, first of it’s kind, multi episode gay themed series was watched 260,000 times over. The series touches upon topics related to sexuality, HIV and safety negotiation in different types of relationships. People like successfully achieved the objective of reaching audience beyond our target of gay and gay friendly establishments, and many of who many be interfacing with the gay community for the first time. A low barrier, non-judgemental and non-confrontational way for MSM to access critical health information.

It was also a great platform to introduce gayhealth.sg and it’s services such as the Pink Carpet Service at the AfA Anonymous Testing Site.

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Gayhealth In Numbers

10,000

volunteering hours

58,000

condoms distributed

158,000

unique page views on gayhealth.sg

260,000

views of People Like Us

1900

accessed Pink Carpet

Pink Carpet Service

The service, which started in 2014, has seen a steady increase in the number of clients since. In 2016, 1900 clients access the service as compared to 876 clients in 2015. The service started to promote HIV counselling and testing among young gay men, but have expanded to include anyone who identifies as men who have sex with men, including bisexuals, gay, and transgender.

The counseling service is staffed by specially trained volunteers who identify as gay or bisexual men. This helps to make it more comfortable for clients to relate and connect deeper, allowing our volunteers to better discuss sexual health issues. 65 clients subsequently became gayhealth.sg’s volunteers of which 14 are trained to be pink carpet counselors.

Workshops and Consultation

4 workshops with topics ranging from basic HIV and STI prevention and treatment, psychosocial health of MSM, relationships to safety negotiation skills building. We were also able to convened 80 community members and healthcare providers for a one day PrEP consultation co-facilitated by APCOM, including presentation from DSC, NUH, and TTSH.

Participants discussed community awareness levels on PrEP’s effectiveness as a prevention strategy, acceptance and key issues to be addressed when making PrEP available through health care providers.

The dialogue also gave healthcare providers an opportunity to discuss and inform the community about their PrEP roll-out programme which took effect from January 2017. Click here for the full report.

Next Steps
In 2017, a peer-led youth drop-in service backed by a core group of ten young gay men will be recruited, trained and empowered to lead the programme. It will provide a safe space for youth who identify as gay or bisexual or are coming to terms with their sexuality. The drop-in will engage through games, drama, movies, quizzes and talk. These programmes will
focus on providing sexual health information, particularly around HIV prevention, assessing one’s risk and the importance to get tested regularly.

Also in 2017, gayhealth will expand its very popular venue based HIV testing to include syphilis too ! We are all overjoyed to see such a huge turnout for the gathering. These are the angels who have volunteered and gave their time to our program and the organization, a gathering where we appreciate their efforts for helping out all these years. It is the drive and dedication which kept us motivated and strive better.

Signing off,
gayhealth.sg team