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Sandra Gidley (Shadow Minister, Health; Romsey, Liberal Democrat) | 

Hansard source

To ask the Secretary of State for Health

(1) what steps the Government are taking to encourage primary care trusts to devote more resources to HIV prevention;

(2) if he will establish a short-term fund to encourage GP surgeries and other healthcare settings to pilot routine HIV testing to reduce the number of undiagnosed cases of HIV;

(3) if he will take steps to persuade other health authorities to adopt targets similar to those of the London Strategic Health Authority on the reduction of the incidence of late diagnosis of HIV.

Dawn Primarolo (Minister of State (Public Health), Department of Health; Bristol South, Labour) | 

Hansard source

It is for primary care trusts to decide on their local priorities for funding. The Department published The National Strategy for Sexual Health and HIV (copies of which are available in the Library) in 2001, which highlights HIV prevention as a priority area. The Department has supported local action on HIV prevention through a range of publications focusing on the groups at highest risk including gay men and people from African communities.

As set out in the Health Inequalities: Progress and Next Steps (copies of which are available in the Library), the Department will be funding new work this year to pilot action to reduce undiagnosed HIV by improving the detection and diagnosis of HIV a variety of settings. The Department has previously funded the Terrence Higgins Trust to pilot the acceptability and effectiveness of community-based HIV and syphilis and this new work will build on the evaluation findings from this earlier work.

We welcome the work done by NHS London in setting an HIV prevention performance indicator to reduce the incidence of late HIVdiagnosis. It is for individual strategic health authorities to decide if they wish to introduce a local indicator on HIV, taking into account local and regional variations in prevalence. The Independent Advisory Group for Sexual Health's review of the Sexual Health and HIV Strategy, will also suggest possible indicators for use at national and local level.