**4.3.2 HIV prevalence by venue type**

As shown in Fig. 8, HIV prevalence, based on oral fluid samples, was higher in subjects recruited in sex-focused venues like saunas (14.3%), cruising venues (15.2%) sex shops and naked parties (11.5%) than in other venues such as discos and bars (4.6% and 6.7% respectively).

At city level, HIV prevalence by type of venue (sex focused versus non-sex focused) was significantly higher in sex focused venues in Verona, Bratislava and Ljubljana.

### **4.3.3 Knowledge of actual HIV status and undiagnosed infection**

56% of HIV positive people were not aware of their HIV serostatus, that is, they declared they had never been tested (7.8%), were found to be HIV negative at their last HIV test (47.6%) or didn't collect their result (0.6%). As shown in Fig. 9, the rates of people unaware of their HIV positive status were almost 80% in Bucharest and Ljubljana and lower than 50% only in Barcelona.

Moreover, the average age of people unaware of their HIV positive status was 33.9 y/o lower than that of subjects that knew their seropositivity that was 37.9 y/o, based on their reported last HIV test. Another important fact is that among oral fluid HIV positive subjects, nearly one third (30.9%) reported a negative HIV test over the last 12 months. This data seems to indicate that quite a number of infections were acquired over the last 12 months. At city level this percentage was higher than 50% in Ljubljana while the lowest figure was in Bratislava (less than 20%). All other cities had intermediate values (nearly 30%).

Fig. 9. Percentage of HIV positive MSM unaware of their HIV status
