United Kingdom: "Timebomb" of Britons Unaware They Have HIV

UK medical experts are stepping up their call for expanded HIV testing and warning of a "timebomb" posed by the more than 20,000 Britons who are carrying the virus without knowing it.

"It's a matter of concern that so many individuals in the UK are unaware that they are HIV-infected," said the government's health watchdog, the Health Protection Agency (HPA).

Some doctors are calling for the agency and the medical establishment to boost their efforts to contain the spread of the virus. Dr. Phillip Hay, who teaches HIV medicine at St. George's Hospital in south London, is an advocate of routine HIV testing for any adult seeking medical care.

Hay cited instances in which one person has infected several other individuals and in which HIV was transmitted between a teenager and an older adult partner.

The HPA said 21,000 of the 77,000 Britons carrying the virus are unaware they are HIV-positive, and it called for testing of high-risk groups.

About one-third of new HIV infections are diagnosed when the disease is advanced, doctors say. The number of people in the UK who contracted the virus through heterosexual sex rose from 540 in 2003 to 960 in 2007, according to the HPA.

The Lancet also has taken up the cause. In a May 30 editorial, the medical journal slammed the UK's "appalling failure" to address the spread of HIV. The UK has "no credible strategy to diagnose and care for those living with, but unaware of, HIV in Britain," the editorial said.

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