HIV in NW Rises Above 6000

posted: 17/08/2010

The latest annual report on HIV in NW England shows us that there are 8% more people with HIV using HIV clinics in 2009 than the year before: for the first time there are now over 6,000 people using NW England's HIV clinics. in 2009 there were 6,238 people using clinics compared with 5,767 in 2008. Modern HIV treatments are working well for most people.
 

Infections in the UK - gay and bi men

Almost three quarters of all the new people who get HIV in the NW are gay or bisexual men. However gGay and bi men are only 43% of all the new HIV cases in the NW in 2009.

This is because many people in NW England got HIV abroad - forty-one percent of the new cases were people who were infected outside the UK. Four out of five of the new cases infected abroad are heterosexual women and men, and most had no idea they even had HIV when they left their home countries.

Some countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, have very much higher rates of HIV compared with the UK.
 

Five times more using HIV clinics than a dozen years ago

Now the total number of people using HIV clinics in the NW of England (6,238) is five times bigger than a dozen or so years ago. This is because there are around 800 to 900 new cases each year, and modern HIV treatments work so that very few people die with HIV now. The death rate from HIV is below half of one per cent now, while before modern HIV treatments really started working, the death rate was 9%, back in 1996.

Around the region

Greater Manchester has the largest number of people with HIV by a long way, ahead of Merseyside and Cheshire, and Cumbria and Lancashire. Greater Manchester has 3,754 people using HIV clinics – here HIV affects around 137 per 100,000 people. In 2009 there were 498 new cases in Greater Manchester. Most people with HIV in Greater Manchester live in Manchester and Salford.
Cumbria has the fewest people with HIV in the NW (131; HIV affects around 25 per 100,000 people), and there were 16 new cases in Cumbria last year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Dr Penny Cook, the author of the HIV & AIDS in the North West of England 2009 report said:
“The number of people in treatment for HIV in the North West has now reached over 6,000. Many of the new infections were acquired in the UK and would have been entirely preventable. We must ensure that in this difficult economic time resources continue to be invested in prevention, since targeted health promotion campaigns save the NHS a substantial amount of money on treatment in the long run.”

Professor Mark A. Bellis, Director of the Centre for Public Health commented:
“As the NHS is transformed, prevention of sexually transmitted infections must be seen as a priority.”

Source - Press Release

2009 Report - HIV & AIDS in the North West of England 2009

All years - HIV in NW reports and data 1996 -2009

Permalink

---