HIV increase blamed on inadequate awareness funding

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HIV/AIDS awareness groups say it is important to reinforce messages about condom use [File photo]. (Reuters: Jason Lee )

A lack of funding for HIV/AIDS awareness education in parts of Australia is being blamed for an increase of more than a third in the numbers of cases of the disease being diagnosed.

A new report by the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research at the University of New South Wales has found HIV infections rose by more than 30 per cent between 2000 and 2006.

The biggest increases are coming in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

AIDS groups and health professionals say the figures should spark a renewed awareness of the disease.

In the 1980s, warnings of the destructive force of HIV/AIDS were everywhere.

Public awareness campaigns put the disease at the forefront of public consciousness.

But public health professionals now say high-level awareness of the disease has dropped in recent years.

One of the report's authors, Professor John Kaldor, says over the last five or six years there has been an increase in the number of new diagnoses of HIV infection.

"We're interpreting [that] as increases in new transmissions, and there have been differences in various states, with some of the trends being upwards, whereas some of them being, being more level," he said.

Between 2000 and 2006 the number of HIV cases has increased by 31 per cent with more than 26,000 people infected.

But the increase has not been evenly spread across the country.

In New South Wales, the state regarded as having the largest population of people at risk, notably homosexual men, the levels have remained stable.

In South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria, the levels have risen.