HIV: Barriers to Treatment

Baroness Gould of Potternewton Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I thank the noble Baroness for coming to my rescue on that. It is very difficult, as she knows, because the HIV virus is complex. What is remarkable is the extraordinary advances that have been made in treating HIV over the last 20 years; that has been a real triumph of the pharmaceutical industry. I will still write to the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, about vaccines.

[Baroness Gould of Potternewton (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not going to refer to vaccines but to something else, but a report on the radio this morning said that South Africa believes it has developed a vaccine that will prevent HIV. Maybe we could find out more about that in due course.

I wanted to ask the Minister about barriers, of which there seem to be two. My noble friend has raised one—stigma—and I got the impression that the Minister felt it was perhaps not as serious as it used to be. It is very serious; there are still many examples, particularly of women, who will not go to a clinic, thus creating a barrier, because of the stigma that is attached. The other barrier that is equally important is that local authorities that fund testing are having huge difficulty in raising the funds to do so. Maybe we should be looking at whether there is a positive way in which the Government can help with resources to local government.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

Frankly, this is an area where government can never do enough. We should take some comfort from the fact that the level of undiagnosed HIV is consistently coming down; it is now down to 13%, and we are within touching distance of the WHO’s 90% level. So we are making progress, but I accept what the noble Baroness says. On stigma, I am sure there is much more that we can do.