Resources for patients and others interested in herpesviruses

Make a 30 second film about HSV for a chance to win $30,000 in the AHMF's Live & Love short film competition.

The Australian Government recently launched a new National STI Prevention Program: Sexual Health Campaign to raise young people's awareness about the risks of infection and to generate a sense of personal responsibility to help prevent the spread of STIs.

Communications firm and AHMF sponsor DDB Remedy has won two prestigious international awards for the “It's out of sight but not out of fashion” campaign for the Australian Herpes Management Forum (AHMF). This innovative and powerful print and poster campaign designed to raise...

In 2007, the AHMF conducted an online survey to determine how many people were at risk of having herpes. The results are about to be presented to a wide international audience.

A new two-day course of famciclovir (available in Australia as Famvir) has been licensed for treating outbreaks of genital herpes. The new course consists of a single 500mg dose, followed by three doses of 250mg.

36 per cent of survey participants found to be at high risk of contracting the virus.

Genital herpes is a tricky condition. Some people have recurring symptoms, others don't even know that they have it. You can't always tell when you're infectious, and it might be years between picking up the virus and developing an outbreak. We break it all down for you in our set of ten things...

There are effective treatments for genital herpes. They can be used to:

• Reduce the length and severity of herpes outbreaks
• Prevent outbreaks of herpes from occurring
• Minimise the risk of transmitting herpes to partners.

In Australia, these treatments...

This page is a list of myths about herpes. Many people with genital herpes believe at least one of these statements... but they are not true! This is the place to clear up any misconceptions you might have...

People with genital herpes or cold sores can pass these conditions on to their sexual partners. It’s possible to decrease the risk of passing it on, but unfortunately it’s not as straightforward to prevent transmission as it is for other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) like...

Herpes is passed on from person to person when the virus is shed from the skin of the first person and comes into contact with the skin of the second. This is what happens when a person first contracts cold sores or genital herpes. It’s sometimes possible for a person to transit the virus...

If a pregnant woman has herpes—sometimes when she doesn’t even know it—there’s a risk of passing it on to the baby. When babies contract herpes at birth, the results can be very severe. Fortunately neonatal herpes is rare. We explain how it's transmitted and what pregnant...

Health professionals have different ways of figuring out whether a person has herpes. There’s no single best way of proving that a person has herpes—every case is different and the health professional needs to use their experience to decide the best way in any given case.

It’s common for one person in a couple to have genital herpes, and the other to have no symptoms. Some of the questions that come up in this situation are:

• How can the couple reduce the chance of passing the herpes virus from one partner to another?
• Does the person...

Kissing is one of the most common ways of transmitting the herpes virus. The AHMF produced this television commercial in August 2009 to raise awareness of the issue.

This audio clip of an interview with Professor Adrian Mindel addresses issues such as

• the stigma of HSV
• statistics on HSV infection in Australia
• carrying the HSV virus without symptoms
• diagnosing HSV infection
• the rationale for the Live...