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fifth of patients shun HIV testing
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15922568
I thought this was really shocking. 1 in 20 gay men or men who have sex with men NATIONWIDE are now infected with HIV and in london the number is 1 in 11.
This is scary stuff, why dont they go back to the hard hitting messages of the 80s. People now just dont seem to be worried, and think it will never happen to them.
I thought this was really shocking. 1 in 20 gay men or men who have sex with men NATIONWIDE are now infected with HIV and in london the number is 1 in 11.
This is scary stuff, why dont they go back to the hard hitting messages of the 80s. People now just dont seem to be worried, and think it will never happen to them.
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
Only HIV eh?
Recently, the emphasis seems to have switched from HIV etc to preventing unplanned pregnancy. I suppose there might be the potential for some to argue that if you try to raise the profile of the risk of HIV in sex between men then you're stigmatising all homosexuals.
Personally, that doesn't seem a reason not to do it though.
It's not something I've in memory ever seen much about, far more about preventing unplanned pregnancy, but then I'm a girl not a guy so possibly wouldn't be targeted at me.
Gives some weight to the blood service not accepting donations from men who've had sex with men though.
Surely this applies to heterosexuals too?
I think accepting blood from people who may not know they have HIV and dont even want to know if they have HIV and then not testing that blood for infections is madness. But then they do test it, don't they?
My risk was extremely low anyway (one exclusive sexual partner) and my ex partner came back all clear.
I'm a registered organ donor, but obviously if I was to donate blood I wouldn't be upset about blood testing.
I believe it's the case that all blood is tested, but the marginal chance that the test fails AND the blood is HIV+ could let HIV infected blood be given to a patient. Because the incidence of HIV infected blood in sexually active gay men is so high relative to the rest of the population it creates risk for patients an order of magnitude higher than with other blood.
They do apply similar rules to heterosexuals- women who've had sex with men who've had sex with men (if that's not too many whos and whens) cannot donate blood either. But the fact that we cannot avoid is that certain groups- men who have sex with men, and IV drug abusers- are far more at risk of contracting HIV than other groups. If 1 in 11 gay men in London have HIV that's far more than in the wider population.
I'm plucking these figures out of the air to a degree (from memory, etc.) and making some false assumptions (that people who have HIV are just as likely to offer to give blood as everyone else) however they are close enough for demonstration purposes;
1 in 20 gay men in the UK are HIV+
1 in 200 people in the UK are HIV+
The chance of blood screening is 3 in 1000
So the chances of blood from gay men being improperly screened and infecting someone is 3 in 20,000 or 1 in 6,000
The chance of blood from anyone being improperly screened and infecting someone is 3 in 200,000 or 1 in 60,000
So even though the chance of the test failing is the same, the end risk to the patient is massively different.
Obviously in reality those numbers are off by quite a way, because anyone who knows they are HIV+ won't go through the screening process, so you're only working with the people who have HIV but don't know it. Ultimately the NHS has to make that judgement call and because the probably of someone who is gay having HIV but not knowing about it is 10x higher than the average person being in a similar situation then they are excluded under certain conditions, as are men or women who have had sex with a gay man in the last [x] period of time.
It's about risk not about sexual orientation. People who have used IV drugs are not allowed to donate for a period, people who've had tattoos are not allowed to donate for a period, people who've had sex with people from sub-Saharan Africa are not allowed to donate for a period. Men who've had sex with men are not allowed to donate for a period.
or did i imagine that
It's almost impossible to get a reliable HIV test result within 3 months of infection - so if there are any potential indicators that someone may have got HIV in the last 3 months you shouldn't want to take their blood for donation as the testing is essentially futile.
You are correct suzy:)
Also the new law seems quite bizaare as I'm understanding it.. An abstinent gay man can donate?
The blood donation people want to minimise the risk of patients who are receiving donated blood contracting HIV from it. Therefore, there are lots of rules about who can and can't give blood. The collected blood is tested, but HIV tests aren't very reliable, especially if it's been caught recently. It takes about 3 months for levels to build up enough to show on a test, but the level at this stage is still high enough for it to be passed on to someone else. This means that you can't just rely on testing, you have to rule out people who fall into a high risk group too.
For instance, you can't give blood if you've had a tattoo is the last year. Having a tattoo puts you at risk of getting HIV. Not much risk, but more risk than the same person with no tattoo. So, it rules you out for a year. After a year, if by chance you have caught HIV from the tattooing process then it will show when your blood is tested.
A much higher % of the gay male population have HIV than the general population. That means when you take blood from gay man there's a higher chance that it will carry HIV. Statistically, if you took blood from any random 200 people from the general population, you'd get one donation with HIV. If you took blood from any random 200 people from the gay male population you'd get 10 donations with HIV.
Donations with HIV in them are bad news - > so you try to avoid them. Rule out gay men, and out of those 200 donations we're imagining we're taking, that rules out 19 of the 20 that statistically would have HIV.
But, that seems a tad unfair and also rules out potentially completely safe blood donors. A gay man who has tested clear and has been abstinent since is no greater risk than the general population - basically because since he was last tested he's not been putting himself at more risk of contracting HIV than the general population.
That make more sense?
(All the way through, this explanation assumes that other high risk groups, e.g. IV drug users, prostitutes, sexually active international travellers, have all been ruled out too).
Similar rules apply to tattoos, sexual activity abroad, having sex for money, even acupuncture.