The data for the report is from 2021 and shows that many European countries reported an increase in the number of newly diagnosed patients with HIV compared to 2020. However, the entire European region reported 24 percent fewer diagnoses than in 2019. That fewer diagnoses since 2019 is linked to the fact that the covid pandemic overloaded the healthcare system and affected the opportunities for testing.
The study also shows that more people became infected with HIV than the number who were diagnosed during the period 2018-2021. The test results from half of those diagnosed in 2021 indicated that they had lived undiagnosed with the disease for up to 8-10 years.
“Going in the wrong direction”
That there is a long time between infection and diagnosis is bad for several reasons, says Andrea Ammon, director general of ECDC, in a press release.
– It increases the risk of serious illness and even death. Untreated individuals can also unknowingly pass the disease on to sexual partners, she says.
According to Ammon, ECDC wants the number of undiagnosed people to decrease through early testing and prompt treatment.
– Unfortunately, we see that things are going in the wrong direction with many people living undiagnosed with HIV.
Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO’s regional director for Europe, says in the press release that the data in the report is very worrying, and that the stigma surrounding HIV makes people not get tested, something that “steers us dangerously far off track to meet our goal to eradicate AIDS by 2030”.