(NC Health News, Lee Storrow) — Across the globe, scientists, doctors, public health practitioners and community-centered groups are continuing their work to combat the transmission of HIV.
And they’re turning the tide against the disease.
Australia has made historic advancements in this area, and the country is on the verge of eliminating HIV, with new diagnoses of HIV among gay and bisexual men in Australia falling by 57 percent over the past decade. In inner-city Sydney, that number has dropped by 88 percent.
“These encouraging findings from inner city Sydney show just how far we have come since the early days of the AIDS pandemic before we had effective testing, treatment or prevention tools,” Sharon Lewin, IAS President, IAS 2023 International Chair and infectious disease expert at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said in a news release.
This year’s International Conference on HIV Science was in Brisbane, Australia, at the end of July. The location is fitting, given that the country is on track to achieve international 95-95-95 targets: 95 percent of all people living with HIV knowing their status, 95 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receiving sustained antiretroviral therapy, and 95 percent of all people receiving that therapy achieving viral suppression by a 2025 benchmark.
Over the four days of the conference, which is hosted by the International AIDS Society, more than 5,000 representatives from more than 100 countries gathered to share lessons learned, scientific breakthroughs and areas for improvement around the collective efforts to mitigate the transmission of HIV and other communicable diseases.