3 HIV Positive People Dead In UK After Churches Tell Them To Stop Taking Antiretroviral Drugs

At least three people living with HIV in the UK have died after being told by their churches to stop taking their antiretroviral medications reports the BBC.

The women believed "God would heal them" after receiving advice from their Evangelical Christian pastors and then discontinued the use of drugs prescribed to fight their HIV infections.

"I know of a friend who had been to a pastor. She told her to stop taking her medication - that God is a healer and has healed her," Jane Iwu, 48, from Newham, east London, who is herself living with HIV, told the BBC.

"This lady believed it. She stopped taking her medication. She passed away."

Another woman in east London is came forward with a similar story of a friend who passed away and Prof Jane Anderson, director of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Health and HIV, in Hackney, said she was involved in another case.

"We see patients quite often who will come having expressed the belief that if they pray frequently enough, their HIV will somehow be cured," Anderson said.