The National AIDS Trust today launches Updating Our Strategies, the report from a recent expert seminar on HIV testing and prevention.
The seminar brought together experts in the field, including representatives from the Department of Health, the NHS, the Health Protection Agency and leading HIV organisations, to discuss how HIV testing and prevention strategies should be updated and refreshed within the National Strategy on Sexual Health and HIV.
The report includes key conclusions and recommendations from the National AIDS Trust on HIV testing and prevention, based on the discussions and presentations at the expert seminar.
Key recommendations outlined in the report include: A new HIV testing strategy is urgently needed in England, given the fact that one in three people living with HIV in the UK remains undiagnosed.
-The Department of Health must tackle the continuing high level of HIV stigma and discrimination within the NHS in order to encourage more people to access HIV testing.
-HIV testing should be available in GP’s surgeries on the basis of request or in response to possible symptoms/ reporting of risk.
-The case for ring-fenced funding available for HIV prevention needs to be revisited- too often money for HIV prevention is delivered to meet other immediate and short-term health needs.
The full report is available to download free of charge from www.nat.org.uk
Acknowledgement from Gay.com
12 July 2007
