by Bimpe Archer

HUNDREDS of gay men have been put at greater risk of contracting HIV after being "left without a support service for months and months on end". The warning come as the Belfast trust confirmed its sexual health GUM/HIV Risk Reduction Clinic has no date for reopening - more than six months after it closed as part of Covid-19 reorganisation.

It provides Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) daily medication to gay men to prevent HIV, a testing regimen and `behavioural interventions aimed at reducing unsafe sex'. The drug can stop HIV from taking hold and spreading throughout the body and when taken daily is up to 99 per cent effective.

Despite the pilot project securing funding until March 31 2021, it was among services wound up during the first lockdown as the health service poured resources into preparing to treat coronavirus patients. It began in September 2018 when Northern Ireland was seeing around 100 new cases of HIV are diagnosed every year and numbers rising despite falling in the rest of the UK.

Lifetime treatment costs for one person with HIV is around £380,000.

Green Party councillor Anthony Flynn said there are more than 600 service users in Belfast who have been "left without support for months and months on end, without any information whatsoever about what happened to the service and what is going to replace the service". Read more via Irish News