AQW 10358/17-22 Written question to the Minister of Health
To ask the Minister of Health to detail the rationale for the time lag in the reporting of HIV Infections.
Asked by Andrew Muir MLA on 16 November 2020
- Answered
- Written
- Tabled
- 16 November 2020
- Answer due by
- 1 December 2020
- Answered
- 26 November 202010 days after tabling
- Department
- Department of Health
- Priority question
- No
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.