British women underestimate their risk of HIV infection, a new poll of 1,000 UK adults finds.

Up to 60 percent of female respondents said they do not believe HIV is an issue affecting women in their community, and 73 percent have never been tested for the virus. Sixteen percent of women said nothing could persuade them to get tested. Thirty-seven percent who said they had engaged in unprotected sex in the past five years were uncertain whether their partner was having sex with other people.

"Over the past decade, this specific demographic has been hard hit with a steady rise in HIV infection," noted Nancy Mahon, executive director of the MAC AIDS Fund, which commissioned the poll. "Our survey results expose significant gaps in HIV awareness and education among British women, leading to startlingly low assessments of risk of infection."

"Popular reasoning when it comes to not using condoms includes trusting their partner is not HIV-positive (35 percent), using another form of birth control (35 percent), or simply a 'no-risk' attitude to [STDs] (27 percent)," said Mahon. "But in addition to this low- or no-risk perception, British women feel they lack the power in their relationships to negotiate safe sex."

The Terrance Higgins Trust reports the number of HIV cases contracted heterosexually has risen steadily in recent years. In 2008, 7,300 cases were diagnosed - a nearly threefold increase over the 1998 figure and the third-highest number of HIV reports in a single year. Almost 60 percent of those diagnosed had acquired HIV through heterosexual exposure.

Early diagnosis and treatment are of particular importance because HIV progresses faster in females than in males with similar levels of virus in the blood. Yet 36 percent of UK women with HIV had progressed to an advanced stage of infection by the time they received a diagnosis.