AQW 10358/17-22

Mr Andrew Muir
Alliance Party
North Down

Tabled Date: 16/11/2020
Answered On Date: 26/11/2020
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Health to detail the rationale for the time lag in the reporting of HIV Infections.

Answer:

The Royal Victoria Hospital GUM clinic collate the Northern Ireland HIV data for new HIV diagnoses and also for people receiving HIV care. Public Health England (PHE) collate the data for the United Kingdom and complete a number of validation and deduplication checks.

The Public Health Agency (PHA) usually receives an annual Northern Ireland dataset from PHE in September. Due to COVID-19 this was delayed to 3rd November. The Northern Ireland country HIV data tables were published by PHE on the same date along with the UK report.

PHA have always published the NI data report later, normally 1st December which is World AIDs day.