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Most gay men with HIV in central European capitals are undiagnosed, survey has found
Gus Cairns, 2015-06-09 07:50:00
A survey of gay men in the European cities of Barcelona, Bratislava, Bucharest, Ljubljana, Prague and Verona has found that in all cities but Barcelona the majority of gay men with HIV did not know they had it – despite a majority of them having taken an HIV test in the last year. Indeed having taken an HIV test in the previous year was associated positively with uindiagnosed HIV infecton.
The survey was conducted in 2008-2009 but its results have only just been published in print. Because of this, the situation may have changed considerably in the last six years and the study is best read as a snapshot of the epidemic in gay men and other Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) in central and southern Europe at the time.
What it shows is that at that time, while HIV prevalence was relatively lower in the central European cities (Bratislava, Bucharest, Ljubljana and Prague, respectively the capitals of Slovakia, Romania, Slovenia and the Czech Republic) than it was in the Spanish and Italian cities (Barcelona and Verona), the high levels of recently undiagnosed HIV suggested that the HIV epidemic in MSM in parts of central Europe was poised to expand considerably.
Later evidence from central Europe has found an increasing epidemic of HIV in gay men and a 2013 survey from Poland, for instance, found that new HIV infections in gay men there have been increasing exponentially in the last decade.
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