Tackling the spread

With around 7000 people newly diagnosed with HIV every year in the UK and lifetime treatment costs soaring to an additional £1billion every year, Terrence Higgins Trust has launched Tackling the Spread of HIV in the UK, a plan to bring down HIV transmission and reduce the growing financial burden on the NHS at a time it can least afford it.

We are calling for a renewed national commitment to HIV prevention centred on four achievable actions:

• Halve undiagnosed and late diagnosed HIV within three years
• Increase the numbers of all people on effective HIV treatment
• Identify those who persistently take risks which expose them to HIV and support them to change
• Set HIV prevention against a backdrop of widespread HIV awareness

Terrence Higgince Trust's Deputy Chief Executive, Paul Ward, said of the charity’s new report: "Rising HIV infections are placing an increasing yet avoidable burden on the NHS which hard-pressed budgets can ill afford.

There is no cure for HIV and it is the fastest growing serious health condition in the UK, but we do not have to accept rising costs as inevitable. By renewing our approach to HIV prevention in the UK, by properly involving communities, businesses, charities, individuals and the state we can turn this epidemic around.

The ways in which we can diagnose and treat HIV have advanced a great deal in 30 years, and making a similar step-change in prevention is well within our grasp."

Download our full report.