The Canary Islands registers between 250 and 300 HIV infections annually, according to epidemiological data from the Ministry of Health of the regional government released on the occasion of World AIDS Day, which is commemorated every year on December 1st.
This year this day is celebrated under the motto 'Global solidarity, shared responsibility', which seeks to raise awareness and avoid the stigma of the disease, as well as to publicize the advances against the HIV pandemic, as reported by the regional Executive in a press release.
Thus, in 2018, 272 new HIV infections were diagnosed and reported with a rate of 12.78 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Promote diagnosis from emergency services
On the other hand, the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands has reported that it will promote HIV diagnosis from the hospital emergency services themselves, an action that is part of a strategy of the Canarian Society of Emergency and Emergency Medicine (SEMES-Canarias), GESIDA and the Canarian Society of Infectious Diseases and whose objective is to increase early diagnoses of HIV infection through a system of automation of diagnostic alerts.
In this sense, they indicate that it will be possible to access the diagnosis of people who, due to their profile, are not frequent users of health services, such as young people, immigrants or the elderly without suspicion of HIV who do not know, cannot or do not wish to carry out the screening in their Primary Care center.
In this way, the study of scientific societies foresees that the emergency services of the Canary Islands could diagnose between 40 and 180 new cases per year early.
Finally, they consider that in order to end the HIV and Covid-19 pandemics, which coincide in time, it is "key to eliminate stigma and discrimination, put people at the center of the pandemic, base responses on human rights and adopt approaches with a gender perspective", since they point out that people with HIV infection continue to be exposed to situations of discrimination. In relation to this, they remember that kissing, understanding, loving, enjoying, touching, and living together do not transmit HIV.
