The government has launched its new HIV action plan, which aims to tackle stigma and end transmissions in England by 2030. The £170m initiative will include a national programme to re-engage people back into treatment, alongside an expansion of opt-out testing in A&E departments.
The programme will ‘find and support’ people not accessing treatment and bring them back into care, the government says. An estimated 5,000 people are no longer in treatment, with reasons including addiction, mental health issues, poverty or fear of judgement. HIV is now ‘entirely manageable’, the government states – ‘with the right treatment people can live long, healthy lives and cannot pass the virus on to others’.
The opt-out testing in A&E will continue to target the areas with the highest HIV rates, including London and Manchester, while hospital staff will also receive anti-stigma training so that patients can access care ‘without fear of being judged for their HIV status’. A recent evaluation report from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) found that the opt-out testing had an uptake rate of 70 per cent and had identified almost 720 new HIV diagnoses during its 33-month evaluation period, along with more than 830 new diagnoses of hepatitis C.
‘Our national re-engagement programme, a truly innovative and agile approach, targets the epidemic where it’s growing and leaving no one behind,’ said health secretary Wes Streeting. ‘We’ll bring people into life-saving care and find infections early, when treatment works best, so everyone can live the full, healthy life they deserve.’
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) – which is partnering in the action plan alongside NHS England and UKHSA – has also published the first ever set of UK clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment. The guidelines cover areas such as principles of care, psychosocial interventions, harm reduction and employment support, as well as priorities for treatment and recovery identified by an experts through experience group. The publication follows a consultation process on the draft guidelines which saw almost 800 ‘predominantly positive’ responses.
Meanwhile, people with major depressive disorder – including those who’ve failed to respond to anti-depressants – may benefit from short-term treatment with nitrous oxide, according to a report from the University of Birmingham. The meta-analysis of previous clinical trials published in the journal eBioMedicine concluded that ‘clinically administered nitrous oxide (N2O) can offer fast-acting depressive symptom relief for adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD)’. Nitrous oxide was banned for recreational use in 2023 despite the ACMD advising that harms associated with it were ‘not commensurate with control under the Misuse of Drugs Act’.
‘Our analyses show that nitrous oxide could form part of a new generation of rapid-acting treatments for depression,’ said lead author Kiranpreet Gill. ‘Importantly, it provides a foundation for future trials to investigate repeated and carefully managed dosing strategies that can further determine how best to use this treatment in clinical practice for patients who don’t respond to conventional interventions.’
Clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment available here
Nitrous oxide for the treatment of depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis available here