Battle against HIV in London needs to climb, says the advisor

The Battle of London against HIV will need to be intensified to meet the objective of ending the new transmission at the end of the decade, warned the mayor’s health advisor.

Professor Kevin Fenton, who is the legal health advisor of Sir Sadiq Khan, told the tests and treatment of the London assembly for the needs of the “strengthening and climbing (UP) virus”.

Although HIV diagnoses have been reduced by approximately half in the last eight years, Professor Fenton said this can make it “more difficult to identify people” diagnosed or living with HIV.

Speaking at a meeting of the Health Committee of the Assembly as part of his research on the spread of HIV in London, he said that new transmission patterns were also emerging.

The warning occurs after the mayor signed the Paris statement in the fast track cities that end the HIV epidemic in 2018, with the aim that capital has zero new cases of HIV, preventable deaths and stigma for 2030.

According to him Local Democracy Reports ServiceThe latest data show that a total of 980 people were diagnosed with HIV for the first time in London in 2023, of which 691 were men and 288 women. Eight years before that, in 2015, the general figure was approximately double high, at 1,977.

It was also confirmed that another 563 people in London had HIV in 2023 after being diagnosed with the virus abroad, approximately the same number as in 2015.

Professor Fenton said that the last four decades have seen “notable” improvements in the prevention and detection of HIV and support, but finishing the transmission “will be a challenge for several reasons.”

“As new infections decrease, we can expect to see (that) people who acquire HIV are more likely to have complex lives,” he said.

“They may be higher levels of risk behaviors. They can be poorly committed to existing treatment and care services. They may be dealing with many of the social and structural drivers of the transmission, including poverty, the state of insecure and insecure immigration Other key structural factors.

“It means that what led us to this point will not be enough to take us to 2030.”

Among its suggestions to further reduce the transmission the tests were to be expanded and the access and use of Profilaxis prior to exposure (PREP)A drug that stops infecting HIV to the body.

He also said that the migration patterns of the members of the Assembly had affected the prevalence of HIV among the different communities of London.

“The most recent increase in infections, acquired through heterosexual sexual relations, especially black people in high prevalence countries in sub -Saharan Africa, has been a key feature,” he explained.

Professor Fenton added that health advisors believe that the increase is due to migration to the United Kingdom, but emphasized that “those who have been diagnosed in last year have evidence of being in an effective treatment and have been virally suppressed .. .