Routine HIV testing called for in A&E departments

A hospital consultant in Britain says patients who seek treatment at an accident and emergency department (A&E) should be routinely tested for HIV.

According to Dr. Kaveh Manavi, a specialist in HIV medicine at Birmingham's Selly Oak Hospital, the current system misses many people as it only targets high-risk groups, such as gay men and drug users.

Dr. Manavi's comments have prompted the HIV and AIDS charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust, to commend his call for further testing but the trust suggests A&E is not an appropriate place to target those most likely to be affected, gay men and people of sub-Saharan African origin living in the UK.

The Trust says that GPs and sexual health clinics should encourage more patients to be tested as one third of people who do not know they have HIV and the majority of new infections come from such people.

Dr. Manavi says current data suggests a large proportion of patients, in the UK at least, are heterosexual and target-based HIV tests offering the test to intravenous drug users and gay men is not going to work because other individuals may not identify themselves as a risk.

He says studies suggest a fourth of patients infected with HIV are diagnosed late and that demonstrates that the target-based HIV tests were not tackling all those affected and the sooner an individual is diagnosed with HIV, the better their chance of a better prognosis.

Manavi says the under the current system many HIV-infected patients are missed and he wants screening to be expanded so more patients are diagnosed early, giving them the opportunity for better treatment and the chance to change their behaviour to reduce the risk of infecting others.

The Terrence Higgins Trust says targeted testing by GPs and clinics would be more cost effective as they have some idea of their patients sexual history.

The trust says one person in three who are HIV do not know they have the virus while others who have been at risk refuse a test because of the stigma associated with the virus.