The government needs to give a far higher priority to Aids in the UK, a House of Lords select committee says on Thursday, warning that the present response is "woefully inadequate" and will not stem the growing epidemic here.
The committee is chaired by Lord Fowler, who as a former Tory health minister commissioned the "Don't die of ignorance" campaign that featured Aids as a symbolic iceberg, with most of it hidden below the waterline.
Published on the 25th anniversary of that hard-hitting campaign, the report sounds a renewed alarm. "Awareness of HIV and Aids in Britain has fallen below the public radar," says the report. "Today the common question is 'Is it still a problem?' Perhaps because the scale of the epidemic in Africa is so vast, the undoubted challenge here is pushed to one side. Yet HIV in Britain has not gone away. In recent years, in fact, the number of new diagnoses has been more than double the annual rate seen in the mid-1990s."
By next year, there will be 100,000 people living with HIV, it says. Treatment costs now approach £1bn a year and will not diminish, because patients must remain on drugs to suppress the virus for life.
Spending on preventing infection, however is seriously inadequate, the report says – just £2.9m compared with the £762m treatment bill. Yet HIV is entirely preventable. It urges immediate reviews into the possibility of putting people on medication sooner – and offering it to their uninfected partners – following recent research which showed the drugs can protect against transmission of the virus.
It is estimated that more than a quarter of those with HIV in the UK do not know they have it, which means they may unwittingly pass it to others and they may not be diagnosed until they are ill and treatment is more difficult. The committee wants to see testing for all new patients at GP surgeries and hospitals and is also calling for regulated home tests to be allowed. It also wants a campaign to combat the "ignorance and misunderstanding" of Aids in the UK and help overcome stigma which stops people coming forward to be tested. Better teaching about the disease is needed in schools also.
"In the last 25 years the development of new drugs has dramatically reduced the death toll but that should not encourage a false sense of security," said Lord Fowler. "Acquiring HIV is not remotely consequence-free. Serious medical and mental health problems remain for many with HIV. It leads to a lifetime of treatment. Many feel themselves isolated because of their condition; there are frequent examples of discrimination, ranging from sufferers being ostracised in their communities to people losing their jobs following disclosure of their HIV status.
"People can now live with HIV but all of those infected would prefer to be without a disease which can cut short life and cast a shadow over their everyday living. Prevention must be the key policy. One essential message remains the same as in the 1980s: the more the partners, the greater the risk. Protect yourself. Use a condom."
