Halve It: early testing saves lives!

More than one in four people living with HIV do not know they have it. Over half are diagnosed late, after they should have started treatment, and despite many having had recent contact with healthcare professionals.

If diagnosed early, HIV can be successfully treated and people with HIV can live a nearly-normal lifespan. Those diagnosed late are more likely to experience serious ill health and stand a much greater chance of dying.

Someone who is diagnosed is more likely to take steps to prevent onward transmission of HIV. Medication also makes them much less infectious. It is therefore unsurprising that people with undiagnosed HIV account for most HIV transmission.

Halve It is a new coalition of patients, clinicians, charities, politicians and experts from the public and private sector, all calling for levels of undiagnosed and late diagnosed HIV to be halved in the next five years.

How you can help

This is a crucial time for the Halve It campaign, because the Government is currently creating an "outcomes framework" which will set public health priorities in England for the coming years. If you live in England, please ask your MP to put pressure on the Government to make early diagnosis of HIV a public health priority. We have written template emails for you, so they will only take you two minutes to do.

E-mail your MP now

Our goals

• Halve the proportion of people diagnosed late with HIV (CD4 count <350mm3) within 5 years.
• Halve the proportion of people living with undiagnosed HIV within 5 years.

We call upon all levels of government to:

• Make HIV a public health priority both locally and nationally.
• Ensure the Health Service gives HIV the appropriate priority on the ground by asking that it is fully considered in local health needs assessments and health planning processes.
• Increase and enhance the provision of education and information given to those groups most at risk of HIV including men who have sex with men, and black-Africans.
• Ensure that people diagnosed with HIV have access to antiretroviral therapies known to reduce viral loads and the potential onward spread of HIV.
• Offer GP and other healthcare practices incentives to test for HIV.
• Strengthen the relationship between national surveillance and local reporting of HIV testing by improving local HIV reporting procedures and maintaining a world-class national surveillance capability.
• Improve transparency by requiring the local Public Health Service to report back to the public on local progress in tackling late HIV diagnosis and levels of new infection.

It is estimated that the prevention of one new HIV infection would save the public purse between £280,000 and £360,000 in direct lifetime healthcare costs. And that, had all of the UK-acquired infections newly diagnosed in 2008 been prevented, there would have been a saving of approximately £1.1 billion in direct healthcare costs.

Read more about the campaign: Early testing saves lives – HIV is a public health priority.