HC Deb 07 July 1988 vol 136 cc714-5W
Mr. Rost

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) what are the individual percentages in the high-risk groups, intravenous drug abusers, promiscuous male homosexuals and haemophiliacs, who have been identified as having antibodies to HIV but who have not developed AIDS or ARC;

(2) to what factors his Department and its medical advisers attribute differences in the percentages of people in the high risk AIDS groups, intravenous drug abusers, promiscuous male homosexuals and haemophiliacs, who are HIV positive and who then fail to become actively ill.

Mr. Newton

Available evidence suggests that the most important factor determining the percentage of HIV positive people who become actively ill is the passage of time. The earlier infections are likely to have been principally among homosexual men, and a higher percentage of infected men in this group have become ill than is the case for haemophiliacs or for intravenous drug abusers.

Research into the possible effect of other factors is in progress, but results are not yet available.

The names of those tested for HIV are not routinely submitted to the surveillance centres. It is not therefore possible to determine, in the data submitted to the national surveillance centres, which people known to be HIV positive developed AIDS.

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