HIV in the UK is now affecting a new group: women over 50.

A recent study of people over 50 living with HIV, The 50 Plus report, shows that older people with HIV – a growing group of around 19,000 adults – are financially disadvantaged compared with their peers and have serious worries about money, poor health, housing and social care.

The current unemployment rate for people between 50 and retirement age in the UK is 4.4 per cent, whereas in the group surveyed for the report, it is 23 per cent.

Lisa Power, policy director at the Terence Higgins Trust (THT), the HIV charity which ran the survey, told the BBC this was because initially many people became ill and had to give up work after their diagnosis. Others sold up, cashed in their pensions, went round the world and waited to die.

And then, as “brilliant” anti-retroviral drugs started prolonging lives, she said, benefits have been cut for people who hadn’t made provision for their old age, leaving many of the older HIV group living on a basic state pension.

They may have been unable to get a mortgage and not have expected to need a pension.

“We found huge poverty in our study, particularly among those who thought they had a death sentence. Now we’re coming round to understanding that people with HIV have a normal life expectancy.”

HIV, first encountered in the early 1980s, was initially a terrifying mystery condition which rapidly killed, but it has been transformed by scientific and community efforts into a chronic condition. It continues to be debilitating and life threatening but if diagnosed and treated in a timely fashion, can be managed into old age.

So for those diagnosed in recent years, the treatment is straightforward and they can carry on working and raise a family.

In terms of the specific populations examined within the report, it is clear that, while much about HIV and ageing binds them together, each group showed strong and specific characteristics.

Gay/bisexual men had immense fears for the future around how care services would cope with gay men, let alone gay men with HIV, and they also faced an ageist gay culture.

Black African women had by far the hardest time overall, coping with poverty, poor housing, treatment access and migration issues as well as major HIV stigma within their cultures.

White heterosexuals reported considerable isolation and financial concerns.

And overall, black African women and white heterosexuals were likely to have been diagnosed more recently than gay/bisexual men, who represented the vast majority of the long-term survivors diagnosed in the 1980s and even the 1990s.

Almost 10 per cent of all new HIV diagnoses in 2008 were among the over 50s.

And middle-aged women and men who are coming out of divorce or long-term relationships, haven’t been dating since the 1970s or 80s before HIV was on the map and have never thought of themselves as the kind of person who might get HIV are now becoming vulnerable.

As one woman in the survey remarked: ‘[I feel] overwhelmed by my circumstances and the state of mind I was in that I made myself vulnerable to getting HIV, that I didn’t take precautions, that I’m well educated and a well-informed person and I started the relationship and used condoms and then without getting tested we stopped using them and that was a big mistake.

‘I’ve had to question why I allowed that to happen…’

And it is not only peer support that she feels she is now lacking, but also appropriate medical care and information on the interaction of HIV with other infections and conditions, such as the specifically female and middle-aged problem, the menopause.

But this ‘almost 10 per cent were over 50′ means that over 90 per cent were not – so everyone still needs to take care.

The Terence Higgins Trust reckons if we all test, we can stop HIV. Click here to find out more, and do that.