Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his department has made an assessment of the potential merits of developing a public health campaign to reduce late diagnosis among (a) BME and (b) female people living with HIV.

Reducing late diagnoses of HIV amongst black and minority ethnic (BAME) people and women living with HIV is already an aim of Public Health England’s (PHE) HIV prevention programmes.

HIV Prevention England, the national HIV prevention campaign funded by PHE and delivered by Terrence Higgins Trust, aims to promote HIV testing to reduce undiagnosed and late HIV diagnoses in Black African communities (men and women), men who have sex with men, and other groups in which there is a higher or emerging burden of infection. Further information is available to view at the following link:

https://www.hivpreventionengland.org.uk/

PHE also runs the HIV Innovation Fund which supports volunteer organisations leading new approaches to HIV prevention and focuses on engaging at-risk or under-served communities. Since 2015, the HIV Innovation Fund has supported 16 projects specifically targeted at Black African/other BAME people, and three targeted at women. Projects funded in 2018 are available to view the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/innovative-hiv-prevention-projects-reached-170000-people-in-2018