Linda Kirk (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to have the Senate take note of the fact that 1 December was recognised internationally as World AIDS Day. World AIDS Day is preceded by AIDS Awareness Week, which always begins on 24 November. I spoke in this place recently about the issue of HIV-AIDS in Africa, and today I want to focus specifically on South Africa. But before I do, I want to briefly say something about the situation here in Australia.

I am not entirely sure why, but for some people here in Australia the issue of AIDS has dropped off the radar. It rarely makes newspaper headlines. However, contrary to what some people seem to think, the Australian AIDS epidemic is not easing. According to the United Nations Agency UNAIDS, the number of annual HIV diagnoses in Australia is increasing, and is set to revert to the alarming levels of the early 1990s. Rates dropped in the late 1990s, but they are back up. According to the report:

Newly-acquired HIV infections, largely attributable to unprotected sex mostly between men, are increasing, which plausibly reflects a revival of sexual risk behaviour.

This is something that the government must investigate and address.

The latest data on HIV-AIDS in Australia is presented in an annual surveillance report on HIV prepared by the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research at the University of NSW. The most recent figures show that in Australia, as of 31 December 2005, there had been 22,361 diagnoses of HIV infection, 9,872 diagnoses of AIDS and 6,668 deaths following AIDS.

An estimated 15,310 people were living with HIV-AIDS in Australia at the end of 2005, including 1,100 women. The number of new HIV diagnoses in Australia increased by 41 per cent between 2000 and 2005. HIV continued to be transmitted primarily through sexual contact between men.

The rate of HIV diagnosis per capita differed very little between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, but much higher proportions of cases were attributed to heterosexual contact and injecting drug use in the Indigenous population.

In 2002-05, people from countries in sub-Saharan Africa were associated with the highest population rate of HIV diagnosis in Australia. In the past five years, 57 per cent of cases of HIV infection attributed to heterosexual contact were in people from countries with a high prevalence of HIV—countries with an estimated HIV prevalence of above one per cent—or their sexual partners.

An estimated 70 per cent of all people living with HIV infection in Australia in 2005 were treated with antiretroviral therapy. Following a long-term decline, the annual number of new HIV diagnoses in Australia has gradually increased over the past five years from 656 cases in 2000 to around 930 cases in 2005. An increasing number of these new diagnoses were people who had acquired HIV infection within the previous year.

As I mentioned earlier, today I want to focus attention on the issue of AIDS in South Africa. This country is suffering an AIDS pandemic. South Africa has more HIV-positive people than any other country. However, despite generous allocations by the South African Treasury and substantial assistance from foreign donors, only a quarter of those needing antiretrovirals receive them. I will talk about why this is so in a minute. Before I do that, here are some facts about HIV-AIDS in South Africa. According to UNAIDS, there are currently around 5.5 million South Africans living with HIV. A 2005 antenatal survey suggested that 30 per cent of pregnant women were living with HIV. One thousand people become infected with HIV every day in South Africa. The majority of people in South Africa living with HIV are women; there are 3.1 million of them. Last year there were 320,000 deaths in South Africa due to AIDS. Turning this around to think about it a different way, that means 880 people die from AIDS related illnesses every day. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans in South Africa and 19 per cent of people aged between 15 and 49 are living with HIV.

The World AIDS Conference 2006 was held in August in Toronto. At the conference, Stephen Lewis, who is the United Nations special envoy for Africa, was critical of the South African government. He described the government as negligent for failing to properly roll out treatment programs. He also criticised the views of some government ministers. One government figure he referred to was the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who also spoke at the Toronto conference. The minister told conference delegates that, instead of antiretrovirals, she wanted to give citizens who are suffering AIDS traditional treatments like garlic, lemons and beetroot. The minister had previously described antiretrovirals as poisons.

The views of South African President Thabo Mbeki have also been widely reported in the press, including his questioning that HIV leads to AIDS. He has also been quoted as saying that the AIDS epidemic has been manufactured by Western pharmaceutical companies to sell their antiretroviral drugs. I am pleased to say that, despite these views, the official South African government position appears to support the scientific orthodoxy that HIV does cause AIDS. Also, South African government policy appears to support the provision of antiretrovirals. In 2004 the government budgeted $1.7 billion for antiretroviral therapy over five years.

In the remaining time available, I would like to speak a bit more broadly about this topic. I spoke in this place a short while ago about the enormous problem of HIV-AIDS in Africa. I would now like to spend some time recapping a couple of very sad facts about the global AIDS crisis. Last year, over three million people died from AIDS related illnesses and close to five million people contracted HIV. There are now over 40 million people living with HIV, and half of them are women. Sixty-five per cent of those who contracted HIV last year live in sub-Saharan Africa. In Africa there are now 12 million AIDS orphans. Fifty per cent of those who contracted HIV last year are young people aged between 15 and 24. It has now been 25 years since AIDS was first diagnosed. One in three new infections outside Africa affects injecting drug users and 25 million people have now died from AIDS illnesses.

I am aware that I have been quoting an awful lot of figures in my remarks today. It would take some time to reflect on the figures that I have cited and to understand and appreciate the impact of those figures and how many people are being affected by this tragic disease. I call on the Australian government to do more to help fight the worldwide AIDS epidemic. Australian aid to Africa for HIV and AIDS was cut from $111 million in 1994-95 to just $69 million in 1998-99—almost a fifty per cent decrease—and it has stayed at or below that level in the years 2001 to 2005. As I have said before, that is not good enough. A wealthy and prosperous country like ours ought to be increasing the money it is putting into Australian aid for Africa. There is an urgent need to do so. I call on the government to give very urgent consideration to this matter in a week when we have observed World AIDS Day.