Sydney’s former HIV epicenter nearing transmission end: researchers

Last year, just 11 new HIV cases were reported in inner Sydney, one researcher said.

Paris:

The inner Sydney district, once the epicenter of Australia’s HIV epidemic, is very close to becoming the first place in the world to reach a UN target for ending transmission of the virus, researchers said Monday.

UNAIDS has set a target of ending AIDS as a global health threat by 2030, which includes reducing the number of new HIV cases by 90 percent compared to 2010.

In inner Sydney, there is an 88 percent drop in new infections among gay men from 2010 to 2022, researchers announced at the International AIDS Society’s HIV Science Conference held in the Australian city of Brisbane.

Andrew Grulich, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales who presented the research, told AFP that “we are almost there”, about eight years ahead of the 2030 target.

Only 11 new HIV cases were reported in inner Sydney last year, Grulich said, “an exceptionally small number of infections for what was the epicenter of the Australian HIV epidemic.”

Gay men make up an estimated 20 per cent of the male population in inner Sydney, and they represent the large majority of the city’s HIV cases.

Grulich said the UK and many areas in Western Europe had seen a rapid decline in new HIV cases.

But “I don’t think anywhere near 90 percent has been reached,” he said.

He said, since Sydney has “virtually” already reached the target, it shows it is a viable target.

– Community left ‘absolutely devastated’ –

However, Grulich stressed that this does not mean that the city of more than 5.2 million people is nearing the end of HIV.

“HIV can be eradicated only if we have a vaccine and a cure,” he said.

And in other parts of Sydney the decline in new HIV cases was much smaller.

The researchers found that in the city’s outer suburbs, new cases declined by only 31 percent since 2010.

Grulich said this disparity was due to higher rates of HIV testing in the inner city and the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) — which reduces the risk of transmitting HIV during sex.

Another reason for the progress, he said, is that around 95 per cent of HIV-positive people in Australia are now on antiretroviral treatment, which suppresses virus levels in the blood.

Another study announced at the AIDS conference, which was published in The Lancet journal, states that the risk of sexually transmitting the virus to others in people who have low but detectable levels of HIV taking antiretrovirals is almost zero.

The Sydney research, which has not been peer-reviewed, was based on data from the New South Wales Department of Health as well as annual surveys conducted by gay men about the use of antiretrovirals, PrEP and testing.

Grulich said progress in inner Sydney was particularly important because “this was a community that was completely devastated in the 80s and 90s – a few thousand people were killed in these areas”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV Staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)