Views

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.

Last year saw a record number of gay and bisexual men diagnosed with HIV in the UK. 1 in 17 gay men aged 15-59 are now living with HIV, rising to 1 in 8 in London. This compares to 1 in 360 of the UK population as a whole.

Last week nearly 1500 people wrote to the Minister for Public Health, Jane Ellison, successfully gaining a reversal of the decision to cut the national HIV prevention programme by 50%.

It has been thirty years since the HIV virus was discovered, and despite great progress, more people are contracting HIV in the UK than ever before. In addition, as was true at the start of the epidemic, it is still gay men who are disproportionately affected. Worryingly, diagnoses among young gay men have doubled in 10 years. The lack of progress in reducing HIV transmissions is unacceptable, and urgently requires renewed leadership from local and national government.

Last week the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) issued the first formal guidelines on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a promising new way of preventing HIV transmission. PrEP involves people who do not have HIV taking a daily dose of one or two of the drugs that are used to treat HIV. Studies suggest that this can prevent transmission if the user is exposed to HIV.