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General practitioners in areas of high HIV prevalence should routinely offer and recommend HIV testing for new patients and anyone having a blood test, according to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The NICE guidelines issued Wednesday apply in areas where more than two in 1,000 adults have been diagnosed with HIV. The guidelines aim to boost testing and earlier HIV diagnosis and treatment, and to reduce the stigma of testing by making it a part of routine health care. They are the result of advice from health professionals and the Health Protection Agency and effectively endorse British HIV Association policy.
"Currently, almost half of the people in the UK who are diagnosed as HIV-positive are diagnosed late," NICE said.
The initiative will cost nearly £16 million (US $25.6 million) a year and affect 37 National Health Service primary care trusts: 26 in London and PCTs in Blackpool, Brighton and Hove, Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester, and Milton Keynes.
"We urge anyone having sex with different partners to make regular HIV testing a priority," said Ben Tunstall of the Terrence Higgins Trust. "These guidelines need to be put into practice to combat onward transmission of HIV and reduce the unacceptably high levels of undiagnosed HIV that we're still seeing in the UK."
"The later people are diagnosed with HIV the more difficult and expensive it is to treat them, the poorer their outcome may be and the more likely they are to have transmitted the infection," said Keith Radcliffe, president of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
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