News and Politics | March 23, 2011 | 3 comments

The number of people with HIV in the UK has doubled in ten years ‎

A doubling of new HIV infections in the UK in the past decade is leading experts to tell GPs to offer testing to all adult male patients in some areas.

Health Protection Agency data shows new UK-acquired cases rose from just under 2,000 in 2001 to nearly 3,800 in 2010.

Men who have sex with men remain the group most at risk of becoming infected with HIV. New diagnoses in this group alone have increased by 70% in the past 10 years. There are more than 30,000 men who have sex with men living with HIV in the UK and experts estimate nearly a third of these are currently undiagnosed and unaware that they are infected.

Another high risk group that would benefit from increased HIV testing, according to NICE, is the black African community living in England. In 2009, more than 2,000 black Africans were diagnosed with an HIV infection; one-third of all new diagnoses in the UK.

Routine testing for HIV should be offered to all patients, regardless of age or ethnic background, who are registering with a GP, taking a blood test or being admitted to hospital in these areas, NICE says. The aim is to avoid stigmatising the groups with the highest incidence of the disease – gay men and black Africans.

The lifetime cost of treating someone with HIV is almost £320,000 and the HPA says the NHS could have saved £1.2 billion if all 3,780 cases infected in the UK in 2010 had been prevented.

There were 65,319 people known to be living with HIV in the UK in 2009. However, surveillance of blood samples given in hospital tests for other conditions suggests the true number living with the virus was 86,500.

Sources: The Independent and BBC

  1. groups:
    News and Politics
  2. tags:
    AIDS,  HIV,  HIV/AIDS
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