HIV testing kit for high-risk patients launched

Public Health England has launched the first nationally available HIV kit for high-risk patients.

The home-sampling test kit can be ordered online and allows users to take a small sample of their own blood that can then be returned to a laboratory for testing and results management. The national project runs until January 1st 2016.

This initiative is being launched alongside figures showing that an estimated 103,700 people in the UK were living with HIV in 2014, with around 17 percent being unaware and therefore at risk of unknowingly passing the virus on to others.

Among men who have sex with men, 6,500 remain unaware of their HIV infection, as is also the case in 3,900 men and women from black African communities.

Professor Kevin Fenton, director of health and wellbeing at Public Health England, said: "Despite national rates of HIV declining, it is still a growing problem within certain communities and levels of HIV testing among high-risk people remain too low."

Recent improvements in HIV treatment means those diagnosed early can have a life expectancy almost matching that of people who are free of the disease.