Deja tu Huella prevents up to 8,000 HIV infections through emergency room diagnosis

The Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine (Semes), together with Gilead and other partners such as INFURG-Semes and Seimc, presented the progress of the “Deja tu Huella” program. This project, which started four years ago, aims to reduce hidden HIV infection in Spain through diagnostics carried out in emergency services.

In the first half of 2023, 2,000 new HIV diagnoses were registered, of which 58% were detected at a very early stage, up to 100 days after infection. This early detection was critical avoid 3,994 to 7,988 new infections. To date, more than 160 hospitals and 200 specialists have performed 170,256 serological tests.

Juan González del Castillo, coordinator of INFURG-SEMES, emphasized the multi-sectoral collaboration of the project: “This is an example collaboration between scientific societies, patient organizations, health authorities, hospitals and industry, and public health innovations that have had a resounding success.”

The program identified specific data by region: in Catalonia, 57.8% of diagnoses were in the acute phase.whereas in Madrid, late diagnosis is more common in heterosexual transmission.

Gilead’s Pau Arbos emphasized that “to end this epidemic for everyone, everywhere, we know that innovation must be introduced not only in the development of new treatments, but also in other aspects, such as diagnosis and referral of patients

. “Deja tu Huella is an example of how to move forward in this area.”