95% think routine hiv testing would be good – what are we waiting for?

On the website of The HIV Support Centre the following is published:

I wholeheartedly support the call for routine HIV testing locally from Miriam Stoppard OBE – but not just in England – we need it throughout the United Kingdom.

Miriam Stoppard has suggested that routine testing for HIV would help to save lives. Obviously, this would be a good idea. It would also help cut down the stigma that surround a diagnosis of HIV. If everyone were treated equally and routinely tested, this could mean that diagnosis would not be as late as for many people at present.

Despite vast improvements in treatment over the past two decades, HIV still reduces life expectancy by 13 years in the UK, mainly because it’s often diagnosed late.

The later it’s caught, the more damage is done to the body and the harder (and more expensive) it is to treat. The virus destroys important parts of the immune system, eventually leading to pneumonia, organ damage, tumours and even brain damage.

And most importantly of all, the longer someone goes undiagnosed, the more likely they are to have unwittingly passed the infection on to someone else.

Encouragingly, more than 95% of people questioned in casualty wards and GPs’ surgeries agree routine testing is a good idea. So what are we waiting for?

Read the rest of her article in The Mirror