Key findings
- It is now clear that the decline in annual AIDS incidence observed since 1994, due to the fall in HIV transmission rates a decade earlier, has been substantially accelerated over the past two to three years by improvements in therapy. Over 1,000 fewer AIDS cases have occurred than would have been expected had there been no improvement in therapy for HIV infection since 1995.
- Transmission of HIV in Australia continues to occur primarily through sexual contact between men. There is no evidence of recent change in rates of transmission via this route, nor any increase in the very low rates of transmission through the injecting of illicit drugs, or heterosexual contact.
- Among people with HIV infection, over a third were not receiving antiretroviral therapy in 1998.
- The high number of hepatitis C diagnoses reported in 1998 continued to make this infection the most frequently reported notifiable infection in Australia.
- Reported cases of gonorrhoea increased; reported cases of syphilis also increased in 1998. These trends may be due to changing diagnostic methods and case definitions rather than to real shifts in prevalence or incidence of these infections. Indigenous people continue to be diagnosed with these infections at much higher rates than non–Indigenous people.