aidsmap news story
A series of presentations at AIDS 2026 had the title ‘Chemsex everywhere: Interventions across contexts,’ which encapsulated two realities.
Firstly, chemsex (sexualised drug use, or sex enhanced by drugs) has become a global phenomenon among gay and bisexual men, transgender women and other gender and sexually diverse people. Despite differing cultural contexts, there are remarkable commonalities in terms of the drugs used (all presenters, from three continents, named methamphetamine as the primary chemsex drug) and the health needs of users.
Secondly, however, it often ‘falls between the cracks’ of programmes designed to address the use of criminalised drugs (whether punitive or based on harm reduction) and those designed for the HIV and sexual health needs of key affected populations (whose sex may also be criminalised). Neither was built with sexualised drug use in mind; as a result, chemsex users often have a very high vulnerability to HIV and STIs, but also to mental ill-health and socio-economic difficulty.
Read the full news story here.
View all aidsmap reports from AIDS 2026
Source : aidsmap
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