People in Sheffield are urged to get tested for HIV/AIDS after data shows a slow rise from pre-pandemic testing levels in Sheffield.
There is a negative stigma around the disease, preventing people from getting tested.
Claire Ryan, HIV lead consultant for Sheffield Teaching Hospital, said: “I think what everyone who works in HIV would like to see because it has such an impact on patients, is a reduction of the stigma around HIV.
“A lot of people with HIV, are on treatment, they take one tablet a day, it doesn’t cause them any side effects, and they are completely well and as healthy as you or I but they live with this stigma.
“It would be great to be able to expand education to educate a younger generation to drive down stigma. Because it is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t get tested.”
“People avoid getting tested because they find it so difficult to cope with the idea of having this infection. For them, there can be a lot of shame involved.”
In Yorkshire and the Humber, there are currently 1.9 carriers of HIV per 1,000 people, according to statistics from the National Institute of Health.
Ms Ryan said: “People think HIV and AIDS are the same thing and they’re not. HIV is the virus that people can get infected with, and only if you’ve had that virus for a long time and it’s been undiagnosed or you’ve been unable to receive treatment, will that develop into AIDS.
“AIDS is what happens when the HIV has been allowed to infect certain types of your immune cells and destroy them over many years.
“Once those particular types of immune cells are depleted, then the immune system is damaged to the point where it can no longer mount an effective response, then people are at risk of particular infections and cancers, that you wouldn’t normally see, and it’s only when you have one of these infections or cancers in the context of having HIV, when we would say somebody had AIDS.”
The vast majority of people living with HIV will never develop AIDs because being on treatment will completely suppress the virus and stop it from being in any way active in that person’s body, restoring them to pretty much normal health and giving them a normal quality of life.”
The number of people who used sexual health services in England did rise by 10% last year from 1,048,551 in 2021 to 1,155,551 in 2022.
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