'Shocking' jump in HIV cases

By REBECCA WALSH health reporter

More people were diagnosed HIV positive in New Zealand last year than in any year since the epidemic began in the 1980s.

Figures released yesterday by the Aids epidemiology group at Otago University show a total of 154 people were diagnosed with HIV last year.

The previous highest number recorded was in 1986, when 125 people tested positive.

A further 34 people were reported HIV positive last year but most had previously been diagnosed overseas.

The New Zealand Aids Foundation described the figures as "shocking" and is reiterating the safe-sex message, particularly among gay and bisexual men, who it believes have abandoned condoms because of the success of HIV drugs.

The report found increases in HIV cases among gay and bisexual men, heterosexual men and women and children infected through their mothers.

Most of the rise in heterosexually acquired HIV was among people infected overseas.

Dr Nigel Dickson, one of the authors of the report, said the results were worrying and disappointing.

People appeared to have become "bored" with HIV/Aids after it became apparent it was not going to spread "like wild fire" as had happened in some parts of the world, he said.

Although the number of people with HIV who went on to develop Aids had declined, primarily because of treatments, "people shouldn't think the problem has gone away".

Dr Dickson said one explanation for the increase in HIV cases could be that more people were being tested, but unsafe sex between men was also a likely contributor.

Seventy-one gay and bisexual men were diagnosed with HIV last year, the most since 1991.

Of those, 46 were infected in New Zealand and more than half lived in the Auckland region. Seventy per cent were European, 17 per cent Maori and 11 per cent Pacific Islander. Their average age was 39.

The researchers said combination antiretroviral therapies, available since the mid-1990s, could make individuals with HIV less infectious but "this effect may be offset by more unsafe sex because of the perception of less risk".

There has been a steady rise in the number of heterosexual men and women diagnosed. Last year 52 people (28 men and 24 women) tested positive - the same as the previous highest annual number in 1998.

More than two-thirds of those diagnosed in New Zealand with heterosexually acquired HIV were of an ethnicity other than European, Maori or Pacific Island.


Last year five children were diagnosed with HIV, the largest number for any year.

New Zealand Aids Foundation executive director Rachael Le Mesurier said the foundation had warned of the increase but was still shocked by the figures.

She believed complaceny and misinformation about HIV drugs had probably resulted in some men assuming they could stop using condoms.

"Most know the message about condoms but some are balancing that against the myths about living with HIV drugs," she said.

"Living with a regime of up to 24 pills a day, unpleasant side-effects, being too exhausted or too ill to work is not a viable option compared with the good health of being HIV negative."