‘In the Community’ a project from OutREACH Cumbria has won £66,640 to tackle HIV by providing training for community pharmacists to provide HIV testing in rural areas with high rates of late diagnosis.
The annual National HIV Innovation Fund is awarded to selected local projects across England that tackle HIV prevention in a novel and innovative way in a bid to stem the rising numbers of new infections among high risk groups.
Public Health England (PHE) is awarding a total of almost £600,000 between the 13 successful projects, out of a total of 102 applications. The winners were announced today by Public Health and Innovations Minister, Nicola Blackwood, at a special HIV & AIDS event at Westminster.
Representatives from the Cumbria project attended the event to receive the award. There are an estimated 103,700 people living with HIV in the UK, with around a fifth (18,100) undiagnosed and unaware they have the virus and at risk of unknowingly passing the virus onto their sexual partners.
In 2015, in the North West there were 402 new HIV diagnoses with 46.3% diagnosed late. Ben Vollans, Manager of Outreach Cumbria, said: “Cumbria has one of the highest rates of late diagnosis in the country and we hope to improve that by giving people access to a service they would normally shy away from. A big majority of our target audience will be men who have sex with men, who don’t identity as gay or bisexual, but do use the local gay sauna and cruising areas. These people are most at risk and are often scared off at the idea they may have to visit the local sexual health clinic and be seen. “The funding will make it possible for us to offer a discrete HIV testing service within a pharmacy. The rationale for using a pharmacy is that you could be going to talk about absolutely anything so no one will know why you are there.”
Professor Kevin Fenton, Director of Health and Wellbeing at Public Health England said; “While we are seeing HIV rates declining in the general population, we are still seeing HIV impact far too hard on certain communities. That’s why I’m very excited to see twice the number of projects winning funding this year with some excellent brave new creative approaches to help boost local action to reduce HIV among high-risk groups.”
The 13 successful projects all target groups at high risk and are supported by their local authority.
For more information about the project and to register to attend the offical launch event on 22 November at the George Hotel, Penrith at 7pm please contact [email protected]. Please note there are limited numbers - RSVP by 18 November. Dress code is formal/ black tie.