New cases of HIV at the lowest level for 18 years

HIV diagnoses in the UK have fallen to their lowest level since 2000, figures show.

There was a 17 per cent drop in the number of new cases last year, falling from 5,280 in 2016 to 4,363 in 2017, Public Health England said.

Numbers have reduced by 28 per cent since 2015 and are at their lowest since 2000, when there were 3,989.

The number of new diagnoses among gay and bisexual men dropped by 31 per cent between 2015 and 2017, from 3,390 to 2,330, the figures show.

Professor Noel Gill, head of the STI and HIV department at PHE, said prevention measures had a ‘significant impact’.

Uptake of HIV testing among at-risk men is high, and the number of those having antiretroviral therapy has also risen, where drugs prevent HIV being passed on.

Ian Green, chief executive of Terrence Higgins Trust, said: ‘Now, when someone is diagnosed, they are encouraged to immediately start treatment.

‘This enables them to more quickly achieve an undetectable viral load, which means HIV can’t be passed on.’ But 42 per cent of diagnoses came at a late stage of infection, which is linked with a ten-fold increased risk of dying within a year.