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

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.

Bare Porn Costs - African HIV

posted: 01/09/2009

A documentary ‘Hardcore Profits’ that was shown last night on BBC2 laid bare the cost of porn for Africans. HIV infections and rape follow directly from viewing western bare (condomless) porn. It’s available dirt cheap, almost everywhere. The porn industry has yet to acknowledge its part in driving up the global HIV epidemic.

The documentary maker Tim Samuels tells us -

The moment porn truly stopped being fun came in a remote Ghanaian village – mud huts, barefoot kids, no electricity. The BBC series I was making about the impact of porn, had led me, via Los Angeles (LA) to Ghana. One of the unforeseen consequences of globalisation is the shocking effect that western porn is having in parts of the developing world.

The village has no electricity, but that doesn't stop a generator from being wheeled in, turning a mud hut into an impromptu porn cinema – and turning some young men into rapists, with villagers relating chilling stories of assaults taking place straight after the film's end. In the nearest city, other young men are buying bootlegs copies of the almost always condom-free LA-made porn – copying directly what they see and contracting HIV. The head of the country's AIDS commission says porn risks destroying all the achievements they've made. It's a timebomb, he says.

The concerns aren't theoretical – I met young fathers with HIV whose only sex education came from LA, women living in the villages subject to post-screening abuse, and even a shy teenage virgin who has written to a porn outfit in California asking to star in their films (his return address was care of the local church in Accra).

The porn producers aren't deliberately pushing their products into Africa. But the tide of black market DVDs on sale at street markets and hardcore clips viewable at internet cafes is almost unstoppable. Surely this multibillion-dollar industry needs to take some responsibility for the human costs?

Bare porn as sex education
Since the only sex education some people in places such as Ghana are getting is via porn films, there is a decent argument for the porn industry to produce more films where performers use condoms. In LA, where the majority of the world's porn is still shot, only one company routinely makes such films. The condom-only policy adopted following an industry HIV outbreak five years ago lasted just months.

Massive profits for mobile phone companies and hotel chains

If the ambition is to put more condom-using porn into circulation, which will then more likely end up in those street markets or cafes, some serious multinationals could throw their corporate weight behind this. Hotel chains – among the biggest broadcasters of adult material – have not used their immense clout to insist on greater condom use – much to the dismay of the porn-star STD-testing clinic in LA.

Mobile phone firms are also surreptitiously making jaw-dropping amounts of money from showing adult content on their handsets. Could their ideas of corporate responsibility take on a latex dimension? Might it actually be that ridiculous for the porn industry itself to adopt a spot of corporate responsibility? These are, after all, major businesses replete with HR departments and plush offices nestling next to mainstream film companies. Bankroll sex safe campaigns, harness the allure of their top stars, maybe even make bespoke films for the developing world which educate as well as titillate. Doing nothing, and leaving western porn to march untrammelled into Africa and other places, is a deeply unattractive prospect.

Tim Samuels's 2 part series, Hardcore Profits, started last night (Monday 31 August) on BBC2; part 2 is 9pm next Monday. You can watch part one online on BBC iPlayer here. The part of the documentary about porn's impact in Ghana starts about three quarters of an hour into the one hour long programme.
 

Source