Paris (AFP) – Sydney’s inner suburbs, once the epicenter of Australia’s AIDS epidemic, are now close to achieving the world’s first UN target to end the spread of HIV, researchers at the University of New South Wales said today. .
The United Nations AIDS Program (UNAIDS) has set a goal of making AIDS no longer a global health threat by the end of 2030, including reducing new HIV infections by 90% compared to 2010.
The number of new HIV infections among gay men in inner Sydney fell by 88 per cent between 2010 and 2022, researchers announced at the International AIDS Society HIV Science Conference in Brisbane, Australia.
“We’re very close to meeting our target of 2030,” Andrew Grulich, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales who published the latest study, told AFP. The schedule is about 8 years ahead of schedule.”
Only 11 new HIV cases were recorded in Sydney’s inner suburbs last year, Grullich said, “for what was once the heart of the Australian HIV epidemic, this is an extremely small number of infections”.
An estimated 20 per cent of the male population in Sydney’s inner city is gay and has the highest number of HIV infections in Sydney.
New HIV cases are also falling rapidly in the UK and several parts of Western Europe, Grulich said.
But Grulich stressed that this did not mean that AIDS was nearly eradicated in Sydney, a city of more than 5.2 million people.
“The eradication of HIV will only happen if a vaccine and a cure are available,” Grulich said.
Study: Former HIV center in Sydney close to ending transmission
2023-07-28 10:20:28
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