New national statistics released from the Australasian Sexual Health and HIV & AIDS Conferences reveal that HIV in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is at an all time high, with 2015 seeing the highest number diagnosed with HIV since 1992.
The rate of HIV notification among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is now more than double the rate in non-Indigenous Australians, and has increased each year for the last five years.
Meanwhile HIV notifications in non-Indigenous Australians remain stable for their fourth year in a row.
Other sexually transmissible infections in Indigenous Australians such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea and infectious syphilis are on average three, 10 and six times higher respectively, and hepatitis C is four times higher, the reports say, with the gap even more significant in some remote communities.
The new figures cast a shadow over Australia’s internationally acclaimed success towards reaching elimination targets for HIV and hepatitis C.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” says Associate Professor James Ward, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute.
“At a time when Australia is showered in praise for being a world leader in HIV and hepatitis C prevention, one of our priority populations is being left behind.
“This, combined with the alarmingly high prevalence of other sexually transmissible infections in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, is frankly an international embarrassment,” he says.
Over the last five years, significant differences have appeared between HIV in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and non-Indigenous Australians.
“There are some underlying risk factors for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population that make it really susceptible to an increasing HIV epidemic if it was to take hold.”
Although men who have sex with men make up the majority of cases in both groups (60% vs 80%), a greater proportion of Indigenous cases are are because of injecting drug use (16% vs 3%) and through heterosexual sex (21% vs 14%).