UK: Former health minister calls for compulsory HIV tests for migrants arriving from “high-prevalence countries"

A former health minister has called for the UK to introduce HIV tests for migrants entering the UK.

Neil O’Brien claimed that there were a large number of people arriving in the UK with HIV who were unaware of their diagnosis and therefore went untreated.

The Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby & Wigston said that HIV tests should be compulsory to get a visa when arriving from “high-prevalence countries” to reduce the risk of transmission from undiagnosed people.

O’Brien, who served as the public health minister between September 2022 and November 2023, said this would be a much more targeted approach than other countries that required HIV tests to get a permanent visa, such as Australia and New Zealand.

O’Brien wrote on his Substack blog that introducing HIV tests for migrants was essential to meet the government’s strategy to end new HIV transmission in the UK by 2030.

The number of newly diagnosed patients had fallen consistently since 2005 but data for 2022 and 2023 revealed that progress had suddenly gone backwards.

This has been driven by a rise in the number of newly diagnosed individuals who were born outside the UK and Europe, particularly among people from Africa. People from east Africa followed by southern Africa have the highest rates of HIV, according to data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

O’Brien linked this change in HIV diagnosis trends to changes in the UK’s immigration system, which has led to a significant increase in the number of people from sub-Saharan Africa.

The UKHSA disputed the suggestion that a large number of people were arriving in the UK with HIV without knowing about it. It pointed to statistics showing that last year 53 per cent of cases in England that were reported to the UKHSA had already been diagnosed abroad. This was the first time that the proportion of diagnoses made overseas had exceeded the proportion of diagnoses first made in England.

In 2023 about 330,000 visas were issued to migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, compared with about 50,000 a year in the 2010s.

O’Brien suggested that the additional cost should be paid for by applicants, which he said would be small compared with visa fees, the immigration health surcharge and other costs of travel.

He said the system would work similarly to that for tuberculosis (TB), which requires all people applying for a visa from a list of 102 countries to have a TB test if they are coming for more than six months.

More than 50 countries require an HIV test for at least some visas. In Australia, anyone applying for permanent residency must undergo an HIV test to meet the health requirement for a visa. Those entering on shorter visas also need to have an HIV test in some circumstances.

Visa applicants intending to stay in New Zealand for more than a year must also have a HIV test.