A hospital that serves the London boroughs with the highest HIV rates in the country is introducing automatic screening for A&E patients.
St Thomas’s, in Lambeth, is believed to be the first in the UK to employ proactive blood testing, which medics hope will identify about 150 people a year with the virus.
Lambeth is home to more than 2,220 gay men with HIV — about 14 per cent of gay men diagnosed in the capital — while neighbouring Southwark accounts for 10 per cent, or 1,450.
One in 100 people across the south London area served by Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust have HIV. But one in five of those with the virus are thought to be unaware they have it.
Every emergency patient aged 16 and above having their blood tested at St Thomas’s will now have it screened for HIV unless they opt out. Last year, 68,000 A&E patients had blood tests at the hospital.
Dr Nick Larbalestier, consultant physician and clinical lead for HIV at Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS trust, said: “Normalising HIV testing will undoubtedly save lives. Just as we use blood tests to check for other medical conditions such as diabetes, we know that routine testing for HIV will identify undiagnosed cases.
“People with HIV are able to live long and healthy lives, but this depends on them being diagnosed promptly and receiving the specialist treatment they need. This is why it’s so important to increase detection rates.”
Doctors believe that about 40 per cent of newly diagnosed HIV patients will have had contact with health services in the previous 12 months, indicating missed opportunities for earlier diagnosis.
It will cost less than £5 to screen a blood sample for HIV — a fraction of the cost of late diagnosis and risk of onward transmission. The lifetime cost of treating an individual living with HIV is about £300,000.
Test results will be available to doctors within 48 hours, with patients testing positive invited back to the hospital to plan treatment.
Dr Michael Brady, medical director at the Terrence Higgins Trust, the HIV and Aids charity, said: “I am sure this will only have a positive impact, especially in an area of such high HIV prevalence, and I hope that other hospitals will soon follow their lead.”
