SHOCK new figures have revealed that the numbers of people getting HIV have tripled over the last eight years.

Greater Manchester has seen an enormous rise in the number of new HIV cases - a 70 per cent increase in two years up to 2003.

A total of 1,703 people are now living with HIV in Greater Manchester, which accounts for more than half of the HIV positive population in the north west.

Health bosses have blamed the alarming rise on parents failing to teach their children basic sex education.

John Ashton, North West Director of Public Health, said: "We need change in the culture of sex education at family level.

Complacency

"Parents tend to a have a prudish, Victorian hangover about sex education in this country - it's pathetic.

"We need to be able to talk about what our children are doing. I am concerned that although the north west was at the leading edge when it came to responding to this epidemic in the 1980s, complacency now seems to have set in."

Last year saw the largest ever increase in the number of people being infected with HIV virus since monitoring began in the north west in 1986.

Greater Manchester has seen the highest numbers of new HIV sufferers - an increase of 233 per cent since 1996.

Unprotected

A report published today by the Centre for Public Health at the Liverpool John Moores University has revealed that there were a total of 725 new HIV and Aids cases reported in the north west last year alone.

The report found that heterosexual people are the new victims of the disease after the numbers of heterosexual people being infected overtook homosexuals two years ago.

Experts say the main way people are being infected is still unprotected sex and the numbers getting the deadly virus from either drug use, blood or tissue transplant or the virus transferring from a HIV positive mother to a child, are still very low.

Researchers also discovered that 43 per cent of new HIV positive sufferers are contracting the virus abroad - that number includes asylum seekers who were infected in their native country and also people who had unprotected sex whilst on holiday.

Professor Qutub Syed, director of the Health Protection Agency North West, said: "The increased incidence of sexually transmitted infections in the north west and across the country is truly shocking.

"People need to wake up to the reality of a very serious situation and start taking responsibility for their own actions and for those of their partners."

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