Don't forget about AIDS, expert cautions

30 Nov 2009, 7:11 pm   -   Source: AAP
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Australians should not be lulled into a false sense of security about HIV, an expert has cautioned ahead of World AIDS Day (December 1).

Australians should not be lulled into a false sense of security about HIV, an expert has cautioned ahead of World AIDS Day (December 1).

Despite safe sex campaigns, about a thousand Australians still contract the potentially deadly virus every year, warns professor of sexual health Basil Donovan.

Modern antiretroviral treatments enable HIV-positive people to live well into old age - a breakthrough in treatment, but a development that has also increased the statistical risk of the virus' spread.

"The good news is people have actually stopped dying, but the pool is growing, and you only get HIV from infected people," said Prof Donovan, who heads the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research at the University of NSW.

"We need to be very careful, particularly gay men or inner city people, because there are far fewer sick people walking around with HIV - the average person with HIV is very healthy."

"That tends to lower people's awareness that it is around."

December 1 is World AIDS Day, an initiative that aims to both bolster awareness of the continuing risk posed by the HIV virus and reduce the stigma faced by those who have contracted it.

HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus - a virus that infects the immune system cells and impairs or destroys their function.

Modern medicines can usually suppress the virus' activity sufficiently to prevent the onset of AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), a collection of infections and cancers linked to damaged immune systems.

HIV first emerged in 1981. It has claimed more than 25 million lives around the planet since then, and despite significant advances in treatment scientists are yet to find a cure.

"Australia is the model in the world for controlling HIV, and we still have a problem," Prof Donovan said.

"HIV globally is still out of control, and types of interventions needed to control it are massive ... throughout Asia and Africa.

"In South Africa, 45 per cent of all pregnant women have HIV, which is just frightening."

The latest estimate is that 33 million people globally were now either HIV Positive or they have AIDS.

There are more than 17,000 people with HIV living in Australia and less than 250 of them develop AIDS in a year.

Just short of a thousand (995) Australians were newly diagnosed with HIV last year, down slightly from the 1,051 new cases that emerged in 2007.

While this number appears to have plateaued, it was well up on what was occurring a decade ago, when 718 new cases were recorded in 1999.

Gay men are most at risk of contracting HIV - accounting for 64 per cent of new diagnoses last year compared with 21 per cent of cases linked to heterosexual contact.

The remaining cases were linked to injecting drug users or "undetermined".

The introduction of needle exchange programs for injecting drug users should be credited for helping to keep a lid on HIV transmission, according to the Association for Prevention and Harm Reduction Programs Australia (ANEX).

ANEX spokesman John Ryan said research showed the prevalence of HIV among injectors in Australia over the past decade was less than one per cent.

"... but it would have been 14 per cent without the needle exchange programs," Mr Ryan said.

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