Extremely low and sustained HIV incidence among people who inject drugs in a setting of harm reduction.
This study created a retrospective cohort by linking repeat respondents in a large, national, annual cross-sectional sero-survey to estimate HIV incidence among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Australia. The results indicate extremely low and sustained rates of HIV incidence (0.11 per 100 person-years) over almost two decades (1995-2012). The findings demonstrate that sustained prevention of HIV transmission among PWID is possible and suggest that the early establishment and rapid scale-up of needle and syringe programmes, at a time when background prevalence was low, likely contributed to the prevention of an HIV epidemic among Australian PWID.
aViral Hepatitis Epidemiology and Prevention Program bBiostatistics and Databases Program, The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales cResearch Strategy Unit, Cancer Council NSW dPublic Health Interventions Research Group, The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Jenny
J
Iversen
Handan
H
Wand
Libby
L
Topp
John
J
Kaldor
Lisa
L
Maher
D001315:Australia / Q000453:epidemiology; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D018562:Disease Transmission, Infectious / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000635:transmission*; D040261:Harm Reduction; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000150:complications*