MATTERS OF INTEREST

HIV FORUM

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (15:24): Recently I attended a community forum titled Revving Up HIV Prevention. The forum was conducted at the Uniting Communities' Way Hall. Unfortunately, the topic of human immunodeficiency virus (or HIV) is quite often met with apathy by the general public. HIV is a serious problem that has affected nearly 75 million people worldwide since it was first recorded over 30 years ago. Each day worldwide there are about 7,000 new infections and, for every new person receiving treatment for HIV, another two people have been infected.

The United Nations announced in June last year that they are going to implement a new scheme in an attempt to combat this epidemic. Their goals involve reducing the transmission of the disease through sexual activity and injecting drug use by 50 per cent and also by making HIV antiretroviral treatments available to an extra 15 million people in low to middle income countries. It is the UN's hope that these goals can be achieved by 2015.

Australia has more than 1,000 new cases of HIV diagnosed each year. In South Australia we have between 40 and 60 cases each year. There are about 24,000 people living with HIV in Australia and about 1,200 in South Australia. It is estimated that the cost to this country on average is about half a million dollars over an infected person's lifetime for treatment. That is a staggering half a billion dollars additional liability per year to the Australian health budget. The cost of investing in prevention is miniscule compared to the lifetime treatment costs.

HIV can affect anybody of any age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation—any walk of life. No-one is safe. Prevention is the only cure that we have, and there is no current cure for HIV. Education about prevention is one of the UN's goals. People need to understand that HIV does not only affect gay men or people who use IV drugs. The importance of using protection—that is, a condom—while engaging in sexual activity needs to be highlighted, and also a reminder of the health hazards faced by people who fail to use this protection.

Prevention and early detection are the best methods we have in fighting the HIV epidemic at this time. Prevention is as simple as educating the population on how HIV can be transmitted, how it can be avoided and how to live with HIV if you are unfortunate enough to contract the disease. Statistics show that 60 per cent of people living with HIV do not even know that they carry it. The UN has called for a simple and convenient rapid-HIV test to be made available widely so that this number can be brought down. At this stage Australia does not have the rapid-HIV test, and this has made it difficult to undertake regular testing.

Even though the treatments for HIV have improved markedly over the past decade, there is no cure. Together with awareness and education, the infection rate in Australia has remained relatively stable over the last 10 years. Medication and lifestyle changes will allow people living with HIV to live relatively normal lives. HIV should not be downplayed. It is still a chronic disease, and antiretroviral medications help to reduce the impact of the virus, but a world without HIV is what we hope to see in the future. For this to become a reality we need to work with the UN to continue to work with the community to educate the general public on the risks of HIV; to deploy rapid-HIV detection testing to make it easier to identify those who are infected; and we also need to consider providing antiretroviral treatment to the at-risk groups to assist in limiting the spread of the disease.

Finally, I thank the AIDS Council of South Australia for their efforts in making the public aware of HIV and also for the work they do to assist those who live with the virus.