transmission.”
New HIV diagnoses in heterosexuals continue at approximately 2,500 a year, but 90 per cent of these were due to exposure abroad, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the low level of UK-acquired HIV in heterosexuals is increasing slowly, he said.
More HIV positive women are giving birth, and far fewer are transmitting HIV to their babies. But 43 children were still born with HIV in 2000, 80 per cent of them to mums with black African ethnicity.
Among intravenous drug users, there were 100 to 150 new cases of HIV in the UK in 2000, but the death rates as well as new infections have gone down because of effective needle exchange programmes.
The government estimates that there will be 40,000 people living with HIV in the UK by 2004. As many as 11,000 of these remain undiagnosed.

DoH: ‘We’ll improve the nation’s sexual health’

“We want a 25 per cent reduction in new HIV and gonorrhoea cases by 2007, and all GUM services to offer HIV tests when people are first screened for STIs” announced Cathy Hamlyn, the Department of Health’s (DoH) head of Sexual Health. She was speaking at the Sexual Health 2002 conference in London.
Hamlyn outlined the DoH’s commitment for 2002-3. Out of £14m extra money provided to implement the government sexual health strategy, they had already committed £13.8m. This would be spent on improved GUM and abortion services (£6m), a pilot chlamydia screening programme, the national safer sex and other campaigns, support for drug users and promoting the hepatitis B vaccine. New all-in-one contraceptive and STI screening centres are planned.
Hamlyn, former head of the government’s Teenage Pregnancy Unit, also promised the DoH would improve sex and relationship education in schools. She said: “We are determined to increase school sex education with a specialist teacher in every primary and secondary school.”
She added: “We are considering marketing low-cost condoms and our aim is to flood the market

for young people.” Rose de Freitas