25% of people with HIV don't know they have it

The raw figures are still small (ish) but the percentages are very worrying. You don't need a degree in maths to see that HIV is probably a bigger risk today than ever before to men in the UK, especially to straight men.

The headline percentages are these:

• twice as many new cases of HIV were diagnosed last year compared to five years previously.
• well over half of these new cases were in heterosexuals
• a quarter of the people living with HIV is the Uk don't yet know they have the infection.

There are now 53,000 adults in the UK living with the HIV virus and the number is rising. More than a quarter of this number - 27% - do not know they have the infection. This could be as many as 14,300 people.

The Health Protection Agency has reported 6,606 new diagnoses in 2003 which is more than twice as many as there were in 1998 (2,835).

Over recent years gay men have been much smarter than straight men and it is increasingly heterosexuals who are catching HIV. Of the new cases diagnosed in 2003, 58% - 3,801 - were among heterosexuals while gay and bisexual men accounted for 1,735, or 26%.

'There really isn't anything to say,' said malehealth editor Jim Pollard, 'except those three little words: use a condom.'