No evidence of potential HIV epidemic: Health Dept

The Health Department says there is no evidence that Kimberley Indigenous communities, in northern Western Australia, are at risk of an HIV epidemic.

A visiting medical student from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners says the rate of sexually transmittable infections among Kimberley Aboriginal people is a good indication of the potential for a local HIV epidemic.

It is understood one in five people, between 15 and 19-years-old in the Kimberley, has a sexually transmitted infection.

Paul Van Buynder from the department says 95 per cent of the cases of HIV reported each year occur in non-Indigenous people.

"We see very few cases of HIV in Western Australia, despite the presence of HIV in Australia for 20 years. There is no data to support an epidemic of HIV at all," he said.