Campaigners have called on the NHS to make a breakthrough preventive HIV treatment available immediately or risk a rise in numbers of those contracting the virus.
Currently only 10,000 people involved in a national trial are benefiting from the NHS-funded drug, which studies show is up to 99 per cent effective in stopping HIV taking hold in the body when transmitted.
Activists say it is “absolutely criminal” that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) treatment is not more widely available, adding that it has led to a significant drop in HIV rates.
Latest figures published by Public Health England show that 1,572 people were newly diagnosed with HIV in London in 2017, a 21 per cent fall from 2016. The number of gay and bisexual men newly diagnosed with HIV in the capital dropped by 44 per cent from 2015 to 2017.
Will Nutland, honorary professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a PrEP activist, said: “What PrEP does is offer something new on an individual level as well as having a public health benefit.
“Individually it removes that fear and anxiety of getting HIV, and on a public health level it has had a dramatic effect on HIV acquisition.”
The NHS is running a nationwide three-year assessment of the treatment. The PrEP Impact trial, which began in October last year, will run until 2020. It has increased the number of spaces on the trial to 13,000.
But Mr Nutland, who is receiving the treatment, said the numbers are still far too small. “We need to see PrEP routinely commissioned on the NHS and we need to see the trial uncapped. If we don’t do this or wait until the end of the trial in 2020 then we are letting down those thousands of people who will get HIV. Waiting for the trial to end and turning people away in the meantime who want PrEP is absolutely criminal,” he said.
Mr Nutland is co-founder of PrEPster, which campaigns for access to PrEP.
Greg Owen, co-founder of campaigning site iwantPrEPnow.co.uk, said getting on to the trial was “a lottery”.
He added that although people can buy the drug online, at £60 for three months of pills and the need for a fixed address, not everybody can access it. “Buying PrEP online is a short term solution. It creates health inequalities and will not work in the long run.”
An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS PrEP trial has outperformed expectations, with 10,000 people already receiving access to this key HIV prevention measure.
“The learning from this trial will be critical to informing the rollout of a future national PrEP programme in partnership with local authorities.”
Money raised from public donations through the AIDSfree appeal will be used to support the Elton John AIDS Foundation projects in six key cities around the world (London, Nairobi, Atlanta, Kiev, Delhi and Maputo). Through UK Aid Match the UK government will double public donations up to £2m to be spent across projects in Maputo and Nairobi.
