UKIP Leader Planned Dubious HIV Comments Ahead of Pre-Election TV Debates

The comments made by leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage on how much migrants diagnosed with HIV cost the UK National Health Service were planned ahead of Thursday's televised leaders debates, the Telegraph reported Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Thursday, during a pre-election debate between the leaders of seven parties, televised by ITV channel, Nigel Farage suggested that 60 percent of patients diagnosed with HIV in the United Kingdom are foreigners and cost National Health Service up to £25,000 ($37, 000) per patient annually.

The Telegraph quoted a source in UKIP as saying that Farage initially wanted to caution of the relatively high number of migrants with tuberculosis "but then we realised that HIV drugs are more expensive."

Farage noted that British people had paid into the National Health Service (NHS) for decades and the system should be used to help those UK citizens in need.

The leader of Wales' Plaid Cymru party, Leanne Wood, called Farage "dangerous" for his approach to the HIV issue, saying that "it divides communities and it creates stigma to people who are ill."

In May 2014, UKIP leader Nigel Farage said his party had repeatedly been denounced as racist, but he denied the allegations saying that UKIP's desire to limit immigration to the United Kingdom does not mean that its members are racist.

The general election in the United Kingdom will take place on May 7. British citizens will elect representatives to sit in the House of Commons, the country's lower house of parliament, for a five-year term.