Associated Press - Saturday November 30, 2002

The Public Health Laboratory Service said 2,945 new diagnoses of the human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to AIDS, were reported in the nine months to Sept. 30 - a 25 percent increase from the same period last year.

Kevin Fenton, head of the center's HIV division, said the number of annual diagnoses had almost doubled since the late 1990s.

"We were very concerned last year when we saw a record number of new HIV diagnoses, but these latest figures are even more disturbing," he said.

"We are not only diagnosing infections that were acquired many years ago. HIV is a current, not historical problem."

HIV continues to spread in Britain despite government education campaigns.

Fenton said about 1,500 gay men contract HIV each year in Britain. Most heterosexually transmitted cases among Britons are acquired abroad, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Earlier this year, health chiefs predicted that the number of people infected with the disease would reach 34,000 by 2005 - an increase of almost 50 percent from 2000.

Public Health Minister Hazel Blears said the latest figures were "extremely worrying." She said the government was launching an ad campaign aimed at young people, featuring safe-sex messages on radio, posters, scratch-cards and beer mats.

"The level of knowledge is remarkably low, frighteningly low, and that's why this campaign I believe will be very effective, because a lot of people don't know for example one in nine people have had a sexually transmitted infection," she told British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

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