The UK government will not be introducing compulsory HIV tests for immigrants, according to UK press reports. Earlier this year government ministers ordered civil servants to examine the feasibility of introducing compulsory HIV tests for migrants from countries with a high HIV prevalence. However, the government has been told that introducing mandatory testing would increase illegal immigration and drive HIV underground.
The review of mandatory testing was ordered after tabloid newspapers, most notably the Daily Express, carried a series of reports about the costs of “health tourism” to the NHS. Several newspapers also reported epidemiological evidence showing that the majority of heterosexual HIV cases in the UK involved migrants from African countries with a high HIV prevalence. Several newspapers, and opposition Conservative politicians, labelled HIV-positive migrants as a “threat to public health” even though there is no evidence that HIV is being transmitted from migrant to host populations in the UK.
Plans for compulsory HIV testing were apparently abandoned after ministers were told that mandatory tests would increase illegal immigration and deter people who could be infected with HIV who had entered the UK, legally or otherwise, from testing for HIV.
Undiagnosed HIV infection is a major concern in the UK, and it’s thought that as many as a third of HIV-positive individuals in the UK are unaware that they have the infection. Plans to increase levels of voluntary HIV testing will be announced by the Chief Medical Officer, Prof. Sir Liam Donaldson tomorrow.
Compulsory HIV testing is condemned by the World Health Organisation. The Euro TB Programme of the European Commission recently recommended against mandatory HIV testing of individuals with tuberculosis, and that there should be better efforts to encourage voluntary HIV testing.
Epidemiological evidence suggests that many HIV-positive immigrants to the UK enter the country unaware that they are infected with HIV. Africans in the UK are significantly more likely than any other HIV risk group to be diagnosed with HIV when they have already experienced severe immune damage and are ill because of HIV.