Australia

Total HIV diagnoses

  • The number of HIV notifications newly diagnosed in Australia has remained stable for the past four years, with 1,065 notifications in 2012, 1,030 in 2013, 1,082 in 2014 and 1,025 in 2015.
  • Overall, no jurisdiction has observed a long‑term decreasing trend in the past ten years.

 

HIV transmission

  • The main route of HIV transmission in Australia continues to be sexual contact between men, which accounted for 68% of notifications in 2015, a further 20% of cases were attributed to heterosexual sex, 5% to sexual contact between men and injecting drug use, and 3% to injecting drug use only.
  • Among notifications attributed to heterosexual sex, 19% were in people born in countries recognised by UNAIDS as having a national prevalence above 1% (high prevalence), and 17% in people with sexual partners born in high prevalence countries.

 

Late diagnoses

  • Based on tests for immune function, over a quarter (29%) of the new HIV notifications in 2015 were late. This means that they were in people likely to have been living with HIV for at least four years without being tested.

 

Overseas-born diagnoses

  • Over the last five years the proportion with late diagnoses was highest in people born in South-East Asia (48%) and sub‑Saharan Africa (46%). Over ten years, there was a decline in the proportion with late diagnoses among men engaging in male‑to‑male sex or male‑to‑male sex and injecting drug use (27% to 20%).

 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diagnoses

  • Based on 38 cases, the age standardised rate of HIV notification in 2015 among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples was more than double the rate in the Australian‑born non‑Indigenous population (6.8 versus 3.1 per 100 000).
  • In the most recent five year reporting period (2011 – 2015), a greater proportion of HIV notifications in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population were attributed to heterosexual sex (21%) or injecting drug use (16%), compared with the Australian‑born non‑Indigenous population (14% and 3% respectively).

 

Mother-to-child

  • Among 205 children born to HIV-positive mothers in Australia in the five year period 2011 – 2015, the transmission rate to newborns was 1.5%, compared to 31.9% in the period 1991 – 1995, with zero transmissions from 2013 onwards.

Australia

Each year, Health Equity Matters provides a snapshot of what HIV looks like in Australia. This resource, HIV in Australia, provides the most up to date epidemiological data in the form of a straightforward infographic.

HIV in Australia 2021

HIV in Australia 2020

HIV in Australia 2019

HIV in Australia 2018

HIV in Australia 2017

OTHER HIV STATISTICS