HIV infection is still on the rise in Australia, jumping by 5 per cent through 2007.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) called for increased investment in HIV prevention programs to combat the trend.

“We’re still heading in the wrong direction,” said Don Baxter (pictured), Executive Director of AFAO

Baxter said funding levels had decreased at commonwealth and all state levels with the exception of New South Wales.

A new report by researchers at the National Centre of HIV Epidemiology & Clinical Research at the University of NSW showed 1,051 new diagnoses of HIV infection in 2007, an increase from the 998 in 2006.

“These relentless increases show that our current investments in HIV programs are just not sufficient to reverse the rate of HIV infections in Australia,” said Baxter.

Baxter also had a special warning for gay tourists visiting Asia, where he said HIV epidemics are “raging virtually unchecked.”

“Most Asian cities have epidemics of acute infection,” Baxter told SX. “It’s like the situation we had in Sydney and Melbourne and North America back in the early 80s where large numbers of people, not realising they had contracted HIV, continued to have unprotected sex.”

While there is no specific data to suggest HIV is on the increase among gay tourists visiting Asia, Baxter warned the scope of the problem in Asia was only just coming onto the government’s radar.

“All we’re saying, really, is that gay tourists just need to be more careful than they used to be,” Baxter said.

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