“Alarming” rise in HIV in women: MPs call for urgent expansion of testing

Ministers must expand HIV testing to settings such as general practices, abortion clinics, women’s health hubs, cervical screening centres, and sexual health clinics, MPs have said.

The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee (WEC) said there had been an “alarming” increase in new HIV diagnoses among women and black and Asian communities which must be tackled in the government’s HIV action plan, expected later this year.

The committee’s report1 warns that sexual health services are “extremely stretched” and without an urgent focus the government won’t meet the UNAIDS goal of ending new transmissions by 2030.

Compared with 2019, new HIV diagnoses in 2024 decreased by 14% in men (from 2094 to 1802) but increased by 33% in women (from 728 to 965), according to UK Health Security Agency data.2

While there were large decreases in new diagnoses among people of white ethnicities, down 40% from 2019 to 2024, diagnoses in black African and Asian populations increased by 80% and 40% respectively.

The WEC report also warned there are an estimated 5000 people with undiagnosed HIV in England and measures to scale up testing are needed.

The call comes after an evaluation of a hospital emergency department opt-out blood testing programme found it identified thousands of undiagnosed cases of HIV and hepatitis B and C, particularly among ethnic minority groups.3

The report said an expansion of a similar community testing programmes to other areas should be supported. This could be funded by programmes already earmarked for the community from the public health grant, which is paid to local authorities from the Department of Health and Social Care budget.

The report points out that upstream funding for a community testing programme would save the health service money in the long term.

MPs also called for the government’s forthcoming HIV action plan to increase access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), an antiretroviral drug given to patients deemed to be at increased risk of acquiring HIV.

Many people struggle to access PrEP, particularly those living in rural areas. The report says that only two thirds of heterosexual men and women are having their PrEP needs identified at sexual health services and even fewer are having them met.

It calls for a national roll out of digital access to PrEP, so that a person does not need to visit a sexual health clinic in person to access the treatment.

The report also says PrEP should be commissioned in community settings such as pharmacies and primary care in order to improve access.

The number of people being tested for HIV in sexual health services had been increasing since the pandemic but has now broadly returned to 2019 levels. There was, however, a 7% decrease from 2019 to 2024 in the testing rate among young people aged 15 to 24, which the committee says is a “concern.” The report recommends a public awareness campaign on testing and contraception targeted at young people to focus attention on the matter.