Views

Pank Sethi, member of our Community Advisory Group, shares personal reflections on why HIV and prisons still matter in 2026.

A new project by National AIDS Trust will set out clear priorities beyond the health service to ensure that no one is left behind in the goal to end the HIV epidemic. 

Our young people advisory group reflect on the importance of young people involvement's in HIV policy and what they hope to see in the future.

Yesterday, Nicky Morgan, the Secretary of State for Education, wrote a letter to fellow conservative MP, Neil Carmichael, outlining why her Government won't be accepting his calls as Chair of the Education Select Committee for compulsory SRE and PSHE.

This Wednesday the House of Lords will be voting on two vitally important amendments to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. If these amendments are not accepted it will mean that future claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (Work Related Activity Group) will face a £30 a week cut to their income.

In my last blog I welcomed PHE’s new tender for a national HIV prevention programme. The annual value of the programme is £1.2 million, the same as the value for HIV Prevention England in 2015/16. In the current context of significant cuts to the public health budget announced by the Chancellor in his Spending Review, to maintain the programme’s value is an achievement, and absolutely necessary given experts agree that HIV incidence is increasing.

Part One. Just before the Christmas holidays Public Health England (PHE) released their tender documentation for a new national HIV prevention programme, to last for three years from 2016/17, with the possibility of extensions for a maximum of a further two years.

Recently-released official statistics show that last year, there were just over 85,000 people accessing HIV treatment and care in the UK. Almost all (91%) of this group were on antiretroviral treatment (ART) and 95% of those on ART had achieved ‘viral suppression’ – this means HIV can no longer be detected in their blood and they can consider themselves ‘non-infectious’.

The plight of refugees has been a high profile issue in the news, on social media and in the streets of Britain over the past few months and tens of thousands of people have shown their support for refugees who are currently seeking sanctuary in Europe. What tends not to make the front pages of the newspapers is that even once inside the UK, asylum seekers continue to live a precarious existence of enforced destitution.

Although HIV treatment and care in the UK isn’t perfect, we can be proud it’s amongst the best in the world. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of people living with hep C – and nowhere is this more apparent than in the current struggle to access new hep C treatment.

On the election of the Conservative Government in 2015 the Chancellor announced plans for further cuts to public expenditure. Yes, there would be cuts of £200million to the Department of Health budget but he assured us these cuts were to 'non-NHS spending'.