2023-07-24 12:32:00
The “Inner Sydney” district might become the first place in the world where the HIV virus is no longer transmitted.
In a district of Sydney, once referred to as the center of the HIV epidemic in Australia, the news infections among gay men fell by 88% between 2010 and 2022researchers said at the July 23-26 International AIDS Society HIV Scientific Conference in Brisbane.
“We are almost there”
The objective of the joint United Nations program on HIV, called UNAIDS, is to ending AIDS as a global threat for health by 2030. This represented a reduction in the number of new HIV cases by 90% by the end of the decade.
Nearly eight years ahead of the UNAIDS target, Andrew Grulich, an epidemiologist at the University of New South Wales announced: “We are almost there”.
Last year 11 new cases of HIV have been recorded in this neighborhood, according to Andrew Grulich it is “an extraordinarily low number for a place that was at the heart of Australia’s HIV epidemic”.
HIV on the verge of being eradicated?
Other regions of UK and Western Europe have also seen a rapid decline in new HIV cases. But according to the epidemiologist “(…) no place has reached a similar decline of almost 90%”.
But that doesn’t mean HIV is regarding to be eliminated. in this city of 5.2 million people.“HIV can only be eradicated if we have a vaccine and a treatment,” continued Andrew Grulich.
The first country to achieve HIV elimination
According to the epidemiologist it is thanks to increased HIV testing et al’use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), which reduces the risk of HIV transmission during sex, that this decline has occurred.
More this was much weaker in the more remote suburbs of the city, new cases have only decreased than 31% since 2010.
This progress is “more than exciting” for Sharon Lewin, President of the International AIDS Society, “it means that Australia is on the verge of being one of the first countries, if not the first, to achieve virtual elimination of HIV”.
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