Nick Laing HIV prevention experts and, indirectly, HIV epidemic researchers have thrown down the gauntlet to the government to put more financial backing into the newest techniques believed to have the best chance of collectively stemming the surging rate of HIV infections amongst gay and bisexual men. For the last three years the number of newly-detected HIV infections amongst men who have sex with men has continued to rise, continuing an overall trend which can be traced back to the year 2000. the latest annual figures, for 2015 and released today, show 153 men who have sex with men were diagnosed with HIV infection. “The trend is concerning and shows the urgent need for a re-energised response to HIV in New Zealand, including Government’s commitment to make available the new tools that can stop HIV in its tracks,” says Nick Laing, acting Executive Director of the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. “New Zealand’s HIV epidemic is relatively small by international standards but that is not good enough,” said Laing. “High condom use has kept the HIV prevalence low but it is clear that condom promotion alone will not stop HIV. We need significantly more testing throughout the health system, the removal of PHARMAC’s CD4 threshold so that people can access treatment as soon as they are diagnosed and funding for PrEP, a daily pill that can prevent HIV infection.” The outgoing NZAF boss, Shaun Robinson, told GayNZ.com late last week that Denmark, a country with a similar HIV epidemic profile to New Zealand, reversed the upward HIV infections trend after making HIV medications immediately available to people newly diagnosed with the virus, and by making the PrEP treatment available to those who for various reasons are unable to maintain regular condom use. Government drug buying agency Pharmac has accepted that removal of the outdated CD4 threshold would be a good idea but has not prioritised spending on the increased amount of medications which would be prescribed. "If the new $154 million being put into Pharmac doesn't lead to the removal of that threshold pretty quickly then I think the community has a right to be very angry and to make the government very aware of that." In what appears to be an oblique challenge to the Government and Pharmac, Associate Professor Nigel Dickson, one of the country's most respected HIV epidemiologists, this morning said "the increasing number of infections in recent years suggests that all possible means of decreasing infection risk and spread should be considered."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Tuesday, 24th May 2016 - 12:01am