Genital herpes resources for patients/public

The AHMF has just launched a new Patient Perspective Survey to research the opinions of Australians with genital herpes. The survey asks about patients' experiences with herpes treatments—what they know about them, what they've tried, and how well the treatments worked.

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.

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 awareness of Genital Herpes in Australia won a New York Festival Global award and GOLD at the Rx Club of New York Awards.

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 women with herpes should do to reduce the risk.

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 with no symptoms of herpes actually carry the virus without knowing it?

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 are readily available from pharmacies either over the counter or on prescription from a GP. Most of these medications are listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and are affordable for most people.

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 from one part of the body to another. This occasionally happens with herpetic whitlows, which are sores or blisters occurring on the fingers, or herpes keratitis, which affects the eyes.

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 chlamydia or HIV.