Tuesday, December 13, 2005

New HIV infections in the UK

Milady recently commented in her blog that
that she thinks gay men are being unfairly
discriminated against. As a group they are
not allowed to donate blood to the Blood
Transfusion Service, and yet a women who had
had anal sex with a heterosexual bloke, can
give blood. See her Soapbox.

Well, is the NBTS being homophobic or too
cautious? I’ll leave you to judge for
yourself.

I’ve spent a bit of time looking up the
latest research info on HIV incidence in the
UK, and have found the latest statistics from
the Government's Health Protection Agency, which I find worrying. The figures were published last month.

As regards infections thought to have been
acquired in the UK, three quarters were in gay and bisexual men. There were 2185 gay and bisexual men and 489 heterosexual women
diagnosed with HIV last year. The rate of
infection amongst gay men is constant from
one year to the next, but it’s slowly
increasing in heterosexual women.

Looking at figures for the whole population
... “During 2004, 7275 new HIV diagnoses were
reported in the UK -- this compares to 7217
diagnoses in 2003. The majority of cases
(4287) were diagnosed in heterosexual men and
women, 73% of which were likely to have been
acquired in Africa.”

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