Private MD News

HIV testing initiatives in UK may be more effective

Category: HIV

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues its push to increase HIV testing rates across the country, officials may do well to look to efforts from across the pond.

The BBC reports that more than 98 percent of all pregnant women are screened for the sexually transmitted disease as part of their regular healthcare. HIV testing rates in the general population tend to be higher in the country's general population as well.

Dr. Stephen Taylor, a physician at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital in the UK, wrote in the new source that getting more people screened should be a major part of any effort to slow the spread of the virus, for which there is currently no cure.

"Only through more effective and more widespread testing can we make earlier diagnoses, reduce undetected HIV cases and thus halt onward transmissions," he wrote.

The CDC has said that more than 1 million people in the U.S. are currently infected with the disease, and that 20 percent of these individuals are unaware of their condition. Officials have called HIV testing the most effective way to stop the spread of the disease.