London’s HIV prevention programme cut

In the UK, London has the highest proportion and number of people who are living with HIV in the country.  However, the funding to prevent new infections has been cut, despite record numbers of people being found to be HIV+.

Although funding for prevention is halved, the cost to the NHS is supporting and treating those who are HIV+ is 20 times the new amount spent on prevention, showing that the resources are spent once someone is diagnosed as opposed to preventing infection in the first place.  Although this scenario is common across many public spending areas in the UK, it is this short term thinking that prevents improvements in society as Ministers are dealing with those in need, not prevention.  This is a hard job to balance when UK  public spending is subject to cuts.

From 1 April 2013, Sexual health testing will become the responsibility of Local Authorities, not the NHS, with many of them facing large budget cuts and there will be an impact on accessing services.

If you are concerned about your Sexual Health, don’t worry, Better2Know is here to help, we have a lot of information on this blog and our website, and we can arrange testing if you like with results in 1 to 5 days depending on the tests you want.