NHS IS NOT A BOTTOMLESS MONEY PIT

IT IS welcome that new cases of HIV are falling. But there is no cure in sight, so lifelong use of costly anti-retrovirals is needed to keep people healthy.

Every year, the number of patients accessing HIV care on the NHS goes up by about 3,000. Soon, they will exceed 100,000.

Treating them is expensive. And, according to official PHE reports, more than half of those diagnosed with HIV in the UK since 2000 were born abroad.

It is overwhelmingly likely that a significant proportion of them were health tourists – because their demography is unique. In no other substantial area of NHS medicine are nearly so many patients foreign-born.

I have asked NHS organisations to investigate this but the responses have been dismissive. But when each patient will cost up to £360,000 in lifetime care, I believe it is my duty to draw attention to this issue. The NHS is not a bottomless pit of money.

Officially there are no HIV ‘health tourists’ because in 2012 the Department of Health made treatment freely available for all. The change was made to stop transmission. But has this policy worked? That remains unproven.

Having raised this issue, I will be accused of xenophobia and racial discrimination. I am guilty of neither: my motive is to protect the NHS and its resources.