Mark Thomas An Auckland Hospital infectious disease physician predicts there will be an overall rise in the rate of HIV infection in the next 20 years. Making it clear the mocked-up graph he presented was ‘fantasy,' and joking he might be hit by rotten bananas, Thomas told those gathered at Body Positive's HIV Treatments Update Seminar in Auckland today that he wanted to stimulate thought about where the infection rate will go over the next two decades. Thomas believes there will be a few small dips and rises in the rate, before it goes into a gradual steady increase through until 2031. Pointing out that since effective treatments stopped people dying from AIDS-related illnesses, each year there has been a doubling of the number of people diagnosed in the ‘men who have sex with men' group. “My expectation is that that rate of diagnoses in MSM in the years ahead, will unfortunately in my guess, remain something the same.” Thomas says the factors that could change this prediction would be; an effective and widely-distributed vaccine, almost everyone in the country taking HIV tests and those who tested positive being treated early, PHARMAC funding antiretroviral drugs for people at risk of infection or an increase the rate of in condom use.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 26th August 2011 - 12:25pm