HUNDREDS of gay men have been put at greater risk of contracting HIV after being "left without a support service for months and months on end".
The warning come as the Belfast trust confirmed its sexual health GUM/HIV Risk Reduction Clinic has no date for reopening - more than six months after it closed as part of Covid-19 reorganisation.
It provides Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP) daily medication to gay men to prevent HIV, a testing regimen and `behavioural interventions aimed at reducing unsafe sex'.
The drug can stop HIV from taking hold and spreading throughout the body and when taken daily is up to 99 per cent effective.
Despite the pilot project securing funding until March 31 2021, it was among services wound up during the first lockdown as the health service poured resources into preparing to treat coronavirus patients.
It began in September 2018 when Northern Ireland was seeing around 100 new cases of HIV are diagnosed every year and numbers rising despite falling in the rest of the UK.
Lifetime treatment costs for one person with HIV is around £380,000.
Green Party councillor Anthony Flynn said there are more than 600 service users in Belfast who have been "left without support for months and months on end, without any information whatsoever about what happened to the service and what is going to replace the service".
"A lot of patients were being safe and following the guidelines only to have everything just stop. We have to worry about the potential impact this could have on infection rates that we have been trying to get down."
Daniel Loughlin (28) said patients have been directed to online outlets for the expensive drug which must be taken every day to be effective.
"I was able to get to the GUM clinic in Derry before the latest lockdown which gave me PrEP and said to come back when it ran out, but not everyone can get there - especially now.
"We were told (PrEP) would be provided for us and suddenly it was closed and there is no word of when it will re-open.
"Why has it been stopped but other GUM services are still open? I know people who have been treated for STIs (sexually transmitted infections), so is it just gay men that are being treated this way?
"The funding is there until March but even when other things started up again this hasn't and we have no idea when it will."
A spokeswoman for the trust said the "transformational project..."was stood down during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic so the trust could concentrate staff and resources into providing essential critical services.
"We are hopeful that the service will be reinstated, however, this will again be dependent on the Trust's priority for staffing and resources as we continue to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Discussions are on-going with Commissioners around recommencing this service including the potential to a roll-out of the provision of PrEP regionally in all trusts."
