North Staffordshire HIV Forum The last meeting of the North Staffordshire HIV Forum took place at The Herbert Minton Building in stoke on Thursday 9th December. The meeting was chaired by Peter Butler, HIV clinical nurse specialist. As Bob Lishman was unable to attend the meeting, Michael Carey read out a message from Bob expressing his concern at what he called the ‘sanitizing’ of the minutes of the HIV Forum. Maurice Greenham followed this by pointing out that the minutes of the last meeting were full of inaccuracies and items brought up at that meeting were omitted. At the previous HIV Forum it had been agreed that a Service User Report should be a standing item on the agenda. However, this decision appeared to have been overlooked or ignored as it did not appear on the agenda for the present meeting. A Service User Report, had been prepared and was circulated at the meeting. The chairman agreed that copies of the report would be sent out attached to the minutes of the Forum of 9.12.99. The report Requested information about the availability of the latest capsule formula of Retonovir in North Staffordshire. Passed on the concern expressed by patients about statements made by clinicians that have unnecessarily alarmed patients. Expressed disappointment at the low key approach and involvenment of the Directorate of Health Promotion towards World AIDS Day. Passed on the gratitude, expressed by service users at Staffordshire Buddies, of the presence of clinical nurse specialists at recent Tuesday & Thursday afternoon drop-ins. It would not be possible to cover all the 13 items on the agenda in this brief report, but I believe readers would wish to know that the following points were raised Working group to be formed to formulate way forward on the management of patients with psychiatric problems. Funding has been granted for an additional Children & Families post to be partly funded by Stoke on Trent Social Services. Sub groups to look at Reducing Mother to Baby Transmissions issues Contactability of Clinical Nurse Specialist. Peter Butler has been supplied with an answer phone attached to telephone no. 552350. He has a pager but still does not have a mobile phone. It was commented that he must be the only Clinical Nurse Specialist in the country without a mobile phone. Combination Drug Therapy. Increasing costs predict that the budget would be under funded. The forum agreed the importance of funding for future treatment. Various items were held over until the next meeting. In the absence of any coverage in the British Press about World AIDS Day an article from the Boston Globe was circulated presenting the global picture. There was a display at the back of the seminar room of material from the MUSICAID World AIDS Day concerts. The next meeting is scheduled to take place in March 2000. Date, time & venue to be announced. If any positive people who are patients of North Staffs Health have anything they think should be brought to the attention of the forum, would they please get in touch with Bob Lishman or myself. Maurice Greenham (Service User Representative)