World Aids Day 2013: 'HIV is not in your mindset at 50-plus'

Freed from concerns over contraception and complacent over the risks of unprotected sex, a growing number of older people are falling victim to HIV – with new cases among heterosexual men and women doubling over the past decade.

For most of the generation now in their 50s, the notion of HIV barely existed during their formative years. But UK government figures released in advance of World Health Day reveal a stark contrast between ages.

Newly diagnosed people aged over 50 infected through heterosexual sex reached 467 last year – up from 239 a decade ago.

Yet while the number of older people being diagnosed has doubled, the number of people in the 15-24 age bracket getting HIV through heterosexual contact has shrunk: in this group there were 180 new cases last year – down from 483 in 2002.

The trend of older people being infected with HIV is part of a wider problem across Europe, according to Martin Donoghoe, programme manager HIV/Aids for the World Health Organization's Regional Office for Europe.

"Most of the infections are not occurring in adolescence but in the middle-age groups," he said. "We are seeing an increase in the number of people in those older groups.

"There are a number of factors. Not using contraception is one of the issues, but it may also be we do have services and prevention messages aimed at the younger populations but we don't see that in the older ones. They are pretty much a group that's been neglected."

In its report on HIV in the UK in 2012, Public Health England said the increase in the number of new diagnoses among older people, and an ageing cohort, had "led to a disproportionate rise in the number of people accessing HIV-related care aged 50 and over".

Last year, one in four adults – 19,120 out of 76,840 people who were accessing care – were aged 50 and over, compared with one in eight – 4,360 out of 35,210 – in 2003.

Older people have the idea that things like HIV happen to "someone else", according to campaigners.

Jo Josh is a woman in her 50s who was diagnosed with HIV in 2008. "If you're over 50 you are not going to be thinking about contraception and neither are you going to be thinking that you're going to be coming into contact with HIV, it's just not part of your mindset," she said.

Ms Josh, who lives in Reigate, Surrey, and has a 24-year-old daughter, recalls discovering she had HIV. "It was the most awful shock, all I can remember is me saying 'I can't die, my daughter needs me', and the response being 'you could live to be 100'."

She added: "People need to have the same attitude of my daughter's generation, which is if you are sleeping with a new partner, you use protection until you and they have both been tested and you know there's no risk of anything being passed on. Unprotected sex is a seriously bad idea at any age."

Sarah Radcliffe, policy and campaigns manager at the National Aids Trust, said: "Older people are often overlooked by sexual health interventions, despite the fact that 16 per cent of new diagnoses in 2012 being among the over-50s, of which 63 per cent were diagnosed late, after usually having the virus for four years or more."

People with undiagnosed HIV are far more likely to become seriously ill, and are 10 times more likely to die within the next 12 months.