News
last updated: 2 December 2010
GO TO www.hva.org.uk FOR THE ACTIVE WEBSITE
New - video interview
Have you watched the 'personal experience' video? One of us has told her personal story to the world. How she got it, what happened with a new partner, how this charity helped her. See it on the NHS Choices website...
Nominate a herpes simplex hero
This survey allows you to nominate a cool clinic, a helpful health adviser or a nice nurse, etc.
A mother caught a cold sore at the time of giving birth, infected her baby which died.
Mrs Scott gave birth to Jennifer in November 2008. Now she has mounted a campaign to get doctors and nurses to consider herpes simplex if a new baby falls ill during the first days of life. Marian Nicholson of the HVA comments “Whilst her death is tragic, we need to put it in context. Nearly three quarters of a million babies are born each year, only 13 develop herpes simplex in the first days of life and four die each year. The reason the risk is so tiny is that all mothers who have herpes simplex antibodies give their babies 'maternal antibody' in the last months of pregnancy. So the baby is born with antibodies and is protected from catching the virus for a few months - when the 'maternal antibody' fades away. Because her mother did not catch the cold sore until the end of pregnancy, Jennifer did not have any protective antibodies and so was able, fatally, to catch the cold sore off her mother or someone else."
"Although cold sores are only a very small risk to new borns, I would still suggest that mothers keep anyone with any sort of infection such as cold, flu or cold sores away from their new babies."
A sky-dive!
Send a donation labelled 'for the skydive' and when we have £1,000 Marian will jump out of a plane. But ALL the money will go to the HVA, she'll pay for the jump herself... So far, we have £235. More needed!
This is part of our new, vigorous fund-raising - needed because the Department of Health is only funding 'new projects' and we want to carry on running our usual service.
Our campaigns
We send 'letters to the editor', submit articles for publication and write to journalists. METRO recently had a cover story about young people and STIs which included the 'fact' that babies born to mothers with herpes simplex die! As if! The truth is that babies whose mothers have herpes simplex themselves have the antibodies that will protect them from mothers' virus, should they meet any while being born. It is only the babies of mothers having a primary illness (first infection) or mothers who have no herpes simplex who are at risk of serious illness. So if know you are infected, you do not have to worry. See the letter we sent to the METRO editor here.
Last year the Times and the Independent recently printed our letters saying that the stigma must stop, and you can read them both here. A longer article explaining what is being done and what needs to be done to improve GUM services was published in 2004.
