Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Nov 28 2008 (IPS) – While HIV infection rates remain relatively low in Australia, the peak non-governmental organisation representing the country s community-based response to HIV/AIDS wants the government to do more to fund prevention measures here and in the region to counter rising infection rates.
We made such massive, excellent inroads early on into the HIV epidemic in Australia and our real concern is that we re actually starting to see all that investment go to waste as infection rates start to climb, says Graham Brown, president of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), the nation s peak HIV-response body.

A report released in September by the University of New South Wales National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR) shows that the number of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnoses in Australia has increased each year since 1999, when 718 people were reported to have been infected with the virus. In 2007, there were 1,051 newly-diagnosed cases of HIV, representing close to a 50 percent increase on the late 1990s.

Prior to 1999, new infection rates had steadily declined since 1987.

According to the NCHECR s annual surveillance report on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmissible infections, 27,331 cases of HIV had been diagnosed up to the end of 2007, while 10,303 diagnoses of AIDS acquired immunodeficiency disorder, caused by HIV had also been recorded, resulting in 6,767 deaths.

Although this represents a small percentage of the two million people worldwide who have died from AIDS, there are increasing concerns regarding the upward trend in Australia of HIV infection rates.
Related IPS Articles

Don Baxter, executive director of the AFAO, warned that the diminished funding of prevention programs by governments at national, state, and territory levels over the past decade with the exception of the state of New South Wales is having a detrimental impact on Australia s ability to control the problem.

The trend of annually-increasing numbers of new HIV infections shows that our current investments in HIV programmes are just not sufficient to reverse the rate of HIV infections in Australia. We re still heading in the wrong direction, said Baxter in a statement following the release of the NCHECR s report.

And with World AIDS Day to take place on Dec.1 the 20th anniversary of the inaugural World AIDS Day, with events to raise awareness of the pandemic to be held around the globe the AFAO is again calling for Australian governments to do more.

Graham Brown says that there is a strong correlation between a real disinvestment in HIV prevention measures including on education and testing and rising infection rates.

New South Wales is effectively the only state that sustained a strong, well-invested HIV programme and it s the only state in Australia that s maintained the lower rates of HIV infection, Brown told IPS.

Conversely, the state of Victoria whose infection rates increased steadily from 1999, stabilising over the last couple of years was, according to the AFAO president, probably the state that withdrew funds, over that period of ten years, the most. And their infection rate went up over 100 percent.

While Brown welcomes Victoria s recognition in recent times of the importance of funding prevention programmes evidenced by the state s stable HIV infection rates in 2006 and 2007 following a reinvestment in prevention measures he argues such moves also need to be made by other governments around Australia.

Really, we need that kind of momentum nationally if we re going to have the [required] impact on the infection rate, he says.

But with the HIV/AIDS problem being far from confined solely within Australia s borders there was an estimated 33 million people in the world living with HIV last year the AFAO is calling for Australia to take action internationally by investing in prevention measures to counter what Brown refers to as a shared epidemic.

The 2008 United Nations report on the AIDS crisis estimates that around five million people in Asia were living with HIV in 2007, with national infection rates being highest among nations in the continent s southeast.

Although prevention efforts are having positive impacts in Vietnam and Cambodia, the epidemic in Indonesia is among the fastest growing in the region.

Meanwhile, in Oceania where an estimated 74,000 people were living with the virus last year the U.N. describes the epidemics as relatively small, except in Papua New Guinea, which has seen an increase in total HIV infections from 10,000 in 2001 to 54,000 in 2007.

And with Australians holidaying and working in the Asia-Pacific region more than ever before, including in areas of high HIV/AIDS prevalence, high-risk behaviour resulting in HIV infection is complicating Australia s response.

The AFAO s Baxter said that through 2007 we became aware of pockets of HIV infections arising among heterosexual miners from Western Australia holidaying in Asia, and some businessmen and miners from Queensland and the Northern Territory working in Papua New Guinea becoming infected through unprotected sex.

But while Baxter also warned that it has recently become very clear that in most Asian cities, HIV epidemics among gay and bisexual men are now raging virtually unchecked, the AFAO recently launched a series of radio advertisements in the Torres Strait Islands the Torres Strait separates the far northeast of continental Australia from the Papua New Guinean mainland to raise education and awareness levels about HIV prevention.

Brown told IPS that it is important to engage effectively with locals in order to send the right message. In this case, the advertisements were developed with Torres Strait Islanders, whose proximity to and relations with Papua New Guinea mean they are vulnerable to the HIV explosion in Australia s nearest neighbour.

For Brown, this is further proof that Australia must engage with countries in the region to halt the spread of AIDS.

We re not separated from epidemics in other countries, he says. It is something that affects us very directly and Australia can have a big impact and role in actually reducing prevalence rates in other countries as well.