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

North Manchester General Hospital

posted: 08/06/2010

False rumours about some changes at North Manchester General Hospital (NMGH) are going around. The service at the HIV clinic is not changing. All that is happening is the hospital is making better use of its beds in some of the wards.
 

Cynthia at the hospital tells us that to meet demands on their services and to use their facilities better, the Hospital will be making changes to some Infectious Diseases wards over the coming weeks.

They want people using the hospital to know just what is going to happen and to end worries caused by rumours and wrong information.
 

What ward changes are planned?

• The services now used on ward J5 will be moved to another ward area within the hospital.
• J6 will stop being an Infectious Diseases managed ward.
• Both ward J5 and J6 will reopen as ‘Fast flow wards’ and the Infectious Diseases Department will keep admission rights to those wards.
• J3 and J4 will continue unchanged.
• There are no plans to relocate the Department of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine to another site.

Cynthia Murphy, Manager – Infectious Diseases Research Department & HIV / Hepatitis Support Coordinator
 

Lancaster HIV Support

posted: 02/02/2010

Lancaster has a monthly HIV support group meeting in the town centre once a month on Thursday evenings. It's a place for social contact, information and advice, and sharing your experiences with others.

The meeting dates and times for 2010 are now all arranged. The North Lancashire HIV+ Social Support Group meets every second Thursday of the month from 7pm to 9pm.

Every 2nd Thursday each month, at 7 - 9pm 

The dates for 2010 are

• Thursday 11 February
• Thursday 11 March
• Thursday 8 April
• Thursday 13 May
• Thursday 10 June
• Thursday 8 July
• Thursday 12 August
• Thursday 9 September
• Thursday 14 October
• Thursday 11 November
• Thursday 9 December 2010. 

The group is open to everyone living with HIV regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race or nationality.

To find out more about the group and where it meets in central Lancaster, please call

• Sue 07825 207 024
• Peter 07855 342 732
   
• or email

HIV Statistics for NW England 2008

posted: 02/09/2009

The 2008 HIV statistics have recently been published. Here is a table showing the pattern of change in the number of new cases ('new cases' means new to the North West of England - it is mainly people newly diagnosed in the region, but also includes people who were diagnosed outside the region and now attended a HIV clinic in the region for the first time in 2008). The table also shows the total number of people who attended a NW HIV clinic sometime in 2008.

At first glance the number of new cases leapt by almost 100 between 2008 and 2009, and comments in the media have made much of this increase. The media also leapt on to the fact that 42% of people were infected abroad. Both points are true, but we need to read between the lines and not leap to false conclusions. 

Yes the number of new cases is up, about 100 more than in 2007, but hardly different to 2005 and 2006.

For the last 5 years new cases have been broadly around 800 – 900 a year. We need to bear in mind that the numbers testing positive in 2008 tells us nothing about when the person became HIV positive, which may have been several, or even many years ago. We shouldn't leap to conclusions about any year to year change in the numbers, because there are all kinds of explanations. Here are a few -

• More people are testing each year
• Gay men especially have recently been encouraged to test at least once a year in high prevalence areas of the NW such as Manchester, Salford and Blackpool
• A larger number of people at higher risk of HIV who attend Sexual Health clinics may now be agreeing to take HIV tests - many refuse, especially people from groups more likely to have HIV, gay men and other men who have sex with men, migrants especially from regions with high rates of HIV such as sub-Saharan Africa, people from ethnic minorities, injecting drug users
• More pregnant women may be agreeing to antenatal HIV testing
• The greater availablility of community testing services
• More people are taking more sexual risks by having unprotected sex
• Random variation - when you flip a coin 100 times you don't get 50 heads and 50 tails each time - because of random variation. Sometimes it's a few more than 50, sometimes a few less. Sometimes a lot fewer of one than the other. It's always at work in HIV statistics - it depends on thousands of people's decisions about whether and when to go get tested.  

'Infected abroad' pot stirred

The media reports picked out that 42% of the new cases in 2008 were infected abroad - particularly people from sub-Saharan Africa. This is old news - a quick look at the 2007 figures would have revealed an almost identical percentage. The explanation is simple. Britain is a global travel hub with strong ties to Commonwealth countries, many of which have high rates of HIV. Millions of people come and go here each year - as students, as workers (including doctors and nurses the NHS depends on), as visitors and tourists, and as people seeking safety here through asylum. Asylum applications are very much lower than in some previous years. Some people arriving here have HIV, but a George House Trust / Terrence Higgins Trust survey found most people have no idea of this before travelling here.

Use of NW HIV Voluntary Organisations chart

We will be carrying out a more detailed analysis of the 2008 HIV statistics for the region and will share this with you in due course.

The 2008 NW HIV Report is now published here 

You can download this report HIV&AIDS in North West England 2008 direct from us - it is a large pdf file (2.48 Mb), so please be patient.