Fri 20 Mar 2009 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
Men who have sex with men should be aware that HIV is increasingly no respecter of age or location, according to New Zealand's leading HIV epidemiologist. Nigel Dixon, Director of the AIDS Epidemiology Group, which has just released the worryingly high HIV diagnosis figures for 2008, notes that men who have sex with men are now spread more evenly across most age groups and seem increasingly likely to contract HIV outside Auckland, although the nation's largest city still generates a disproportionately high number of positive HIV antibody tests. In the six years leading up to 2005 men in the 30 to 39 age group were from two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV infection. Men in the 40 to 49 age group soared and then overtook their younger counterparts until 2007, but a surge in 20 to 29 year-olds during 2008 means all three groups have converged. Just-released figures show 184 people were discovered in 2008 to have HIV and GayNZ.com believes, based on past estimates, that approximately 95 of these are men who have sex with men. Although diagnoses for heterosexual people remain significant, Epidemiology Group figures, based on non-compulsory reporting of information which is sourced primarily through general practitioners, show most of these infections were acquired overseas in areas such as sub-Saharan Africa. Men who have sex with men, however, are hugely more likely to have contracted their HIV infection within New Zealand. Dixon says it is difficult to zero in on what factors have driven the now clearly sustained surge in HIV figures in recent years, but notes that a similar increase has been apparent in Australia, particularly Victoria, as well as Canada and the UK. He says common factors in these countries which might be influencing the increase in HIV diagnoses include the naturally increasing pool of sexually active HIV positive men, a perception that HIV infection is a manageable chronic disease, and to a lesser extent changing socio-sexual patterns facilitated by the internet.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 20th March 2009 - 2:10pm