UK Health Protection Agency publishes figures on ethnicity and new HIV diagnoses since 2000

The August monthly HIV and AIDS report from the UK’s Health Protection Agency provides detailed information on the ethnicity of people diagnosed with HIV since 2000.

Throughout the summer several newspapers have carried sensationalist reports suggesting that the UK is being “swamped” with HIV-positive asylum seekers and “health tourists” who have been labeled as a “threat to public health.”

The Health Protection Agency figures reveal, however, that although the majority of new HIV diagnoses made since 2000 involve heterosexuals, there is no evidence of this leading to a significant increase in the number of UK heterosexuals acquiring HIV from migrants.

Since reporting began in 1982, a total of 57,763 cases of HIV have been recorded in the UK. Of these, 16,375 diagnoses have been made since the beginning of 2000 when clinician reporting of new HIV cases was introduced allowing for the reporting of patients’ ethnicity. Even so, ethnicity is still unknown for 17% of all HIV diagnoses made since 2000 (2,737 individuals).

Among the 13,638 patients whose ethnicity is known, 39% are recorded as white, and 51% as black. The majority of diagnoses in white individuals involve gay men (67%). In all other ethnic groups, heterosexual transmission of HIV accounts for the majority of cases. Only 25% of HIV cases since 2000 in white individuals are attributable to heterosexual sex, with another 5% due to injecting drug use.

The Health Protection Agency sub-categorised the 9,056 reports of heterosexual HIV since 2000. The overwhelming majority of heterosexually acquired cases of HIV were acquired in Africa (74%). Of the 6,316 heterosexuals who were infected with HIV in Africa, 92% are recorded as being black Africans. A further 6% were white, including people who became infected with Africa and those of white ethnicity who grew up in Africa or spent a long time living or working there.

Approximately 50% of people who are reported as being infected with HIV in Asia are white, and it is thought that many of these individuals became infected with HIV whilst visiting Thailand on holiday or business trips.

Only 160 black Africans are recorded as being infected with HIV whilst in the UK. This figure may, however, be an underestimate, as when an individual is reported as having a possible HIV exposure in more than one country, the probable country of exposure is recorded as the one with the highest HIV prevalence. Even so, these figures do not accord with the impression conveyed by some news papers that HIV-positive migrants to the UK are a “public health menace”: the majority of HIV transmission in the UK involves gay men, and all but a couple of hundred heterosexual cases of HIV since 2000 involve individuals who were infected abroad, principally in Africa.