Ireland has the second highest HIV case rate per capita in Europe, a consultant in HIV medicine has said.<\/p>\n
Ireland has committed to ending new HIV transmission by 2030, as outlined in the Programme for Government and the National Sexual Health Strategy.<\/p>\n
However, a new report by HIV Ireland, developed with clinicians, researchers, advocates and people with lived experience from across Ireland and the UK has said the country is unlikely to achieve its objective.<\/p>\n
Speaking on RT\u00c9’s News at One Professor Yvonne Gilleece said that Ireland needs to increase testing rates and access to care and treatment.<\/p>\n
She said in 2024 first time diagnoses exceeded 200 for the first time since the pandemic.<\/p>\n
“We know that if people are undetectable and on effective treatment, the risk of transmission is zero through unprotected sex,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But to get to that point, people need to know that they are living with HIV and they need to be in care and on treatment. So, this is where we really have still got work to do.”<\/p>\n
Prof Gilleece said that the PrEP (Pre-exposure prophylaxis) treatment has been proven to work and reduces the HIV acquisition risk significantly but faces a bottleneck in Ireland.<\/p>\n
“We know there’s about 800 people currently awaiting treatment, with delays of nine to 12 months in some areas. “And this is a completely avoidable way for HIV to stop,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We know that there is a PrEP program working in Ireland. We know it’s part of the sexual health strategy for 25 to 35 [years] in Ireland.<\/p>\n
“However, PrEP programmes have to, not only have drug access, but also there needs to be a workforce plan in place as well, so that people can deliver this care without having these delays that are currently in place.”<\/p>\n
Prof Gilleece said that she thought a difficulty is that people often think the HIV problem has gone away, because there is treatment for the condition.<\/p>\n
“I think because we have effective treatment and we’ve gone from, in the 80s and 90s to a life-threatening illness to now a chronic long-term condition with treatment, people think HIV is no longer a problem, but it still is,” she said.<\/p>\n
She added: “People are still living with HIV. They’re still acquiring HIV.”<\/p>\n
A crucial problem is that some people are getting late diagnosis.<\/p>\n
“That means their immune system is already significantly damaged, meaning that they are often spending months in hospital with lots of illnesses associated with having a depleted immune system,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But also, there’s a high risk of dying within that first 12 months if you are diagnosed late. So, this is a significant problem still.”<\/p>\n
Prof Gilleece said that testing is the key response to the problems caused by late diagnosis.<\/p>\n
She said that a range of settings including GP services, sexual health services, gynaecology services and contraception services provide opportunities for testing.<\/p>\n
She also said that an opt-out testing system is also important. Opt-out testing happens in a number of settings without specific consent given from individuals for HIV testing.<\/p>\n
Women in the UK, where she works, have antenatal HIV testing which became opt-out in 2000, and 99% of women are tested so that they can be treated to prevent their babies getting HIV.<\/p>\n
“Consent is not specifically sought. And it is not required because as long as departments are putting up posters, there’s patient information freely available that HIV testing is occurring,” she said.<\/p>\n
“However, if people do not want to have HIV tested in their blood, there is every opportunity to stop that happening and for them to object,” Prof Gilleece said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland has the second highest HIV case rate per capita in Europe, a consultant in HIV medicine has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-551044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}