HIV in the UK generally receives less attention than it did twenty years ago.

In large part this is because people living with HIV who are receiving effective treatment are now - in many, many cases - living normal lives. In the public's imagination the sense of crisis and the threat of a damaging epidemic (in the UK at least) has passed.

However, the truth is that HIV remains incurable, more and more people are becoming infected and the social consequences of an HIV diagnosis are often - and completely unnecessarily - difficult and damaging.

• The number of people living with HIV in the UK has more than trebled since 1997 and it is now one of the most serious infectious diseases facing the UK, with one in three infections undiagnosed.
• One in three people living with HIV in the UK have experienced severe poverty, and some of the people who need it most are unable to access proper treatment and care.
• A third of people living with HIV in the UK have experienced discrimination, and half of those experiences were in healthcare settings.
• In addition, although legal protection from discrimination has increased, discrimination in the workplace still occurs and one in three people in the UK still do not realise that this is illegal.
• A quarter of deaths of people with HIV in the UK are due to late diagnosis of HIV and a third were preventable.
• Myths about HIV are still common. People in the UK are less aware of how HIV is transmitted than they were five years ago.