Govt funding needed to combat increase in HIV infections

Researchers say governments need to come up with new strategies to address the significant rise in the number of new HIV infections in Australia.

New research from the University of New South Wales has found that HIV rates have been increasing for the past nine years.

The number of new cases has increased each year from 718 in 1999 to more than 1,000 in 2007.

One of the authors of the annual HIV surveillance report, Professor John Kaldor, says that Australia has a lower level of HIV infection than most other countries but the trend is still disconcerting.

"Certainly it is a concern that given the success we've had in the past the numbers have been creeping up in the last few years," he said.

The report has also found that the infection rate was pushed up in part by migrants and Australians who became infected working and holidaying overseas.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations says there needs to be a huge increase in federal and state funding for HIV prevention programs to reverse the rate of new infections.

The federation's Don Baxter says the Commonwealth has reduced its contribution to prevention programs by 40 per cent over the last ten years and some State Governments by even more.

"On current levels of investment we're just not reversing the rates of inew nfection and therefore creating expensive drugs costs expecially down the track for us in treatment drugs," he said.

"So there needs to be an increase in base funding at both the commonwealth level and the state and territory level if we're going to reverse the level of infections."