THE MEDICAL profession “needs to wake up” and start doing many more HIV tests, a sexual health and HIV specialist has said. An inexpensive check could save the Irish health services €150 million in the process, he said.
Dr Colm O’Mahony, a HIV specialist from Dundalk who works with the Countess of Chester NHS Trust Hospital UK, said an estimated 1,500 HIV sufferers remain undiagnosed in Ireland.
Yet many doctors were reluctant to offer HIV tests to patients due to a perceived stigma among patients. “Doctors need to stop pussyfooting around and start doing the test, letting the patient know the test is being done but not singling it out as something unique and different,” he said.
Dr O’Mahony said that an inexpensive €3 HIV test targeted at patients displaying symptoms commonly associated with the virus – such as swollen glands, rashes, muscle aches and pains, fevers, weight loss, anaemia and chronic diarrhoea – would save the health service money.
He estimates that treating a person with HIV costs about €7,000 per annum in contrast to €30,000 a year to treat those who have developed full-blown Aids. However, he said, even more importantly, it should reduce the chances of a person who discovers they have HIV passing it on to someone else.
Dr O’Mahony said there were almost 7,000 people diagnosed with HIV alive in Ireland at the moment.
“The European average indicates that another 30 per cent of people with HIV don’t know it. That indicates that there are another 1,500 people who have HIV in Ireland.”
Dr O’Mahony was addressing the Irish Society of Gastroenterology meeting on Friday where he presented his paper Why Gastroenterologists Should Know Something About Sex.