Kirby Institute, UNSW, 17th April 2023
A ten-year study into the impact of HIV ‘treatment as prevention’ has found that a 27 per cent increase in people accessing effective HIV treatment saw HIV infections decrease by 66 per cent between 2010 to 2019, in NSW and Victoria.
The findings, published today in Lancet HIV, show the success of HIV treatment as prevention in reducing new HIV infections, especially when complemented by the availability of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and increased access to diagnostic testing.
Treatment as prevention – or TasP – is a global public health strategy that is built on the evidence that HIV treatment results in virally suppressing the HIV virus, which effectively reduces an individual’s risk of transmitting HIV to zero. While there is strong evidence from clinical trials to support TasP’s effectiveness, Kirby Institute and Burnet Institute researchers are the first to analyse the impact of this strategy on overall HIV infections at a population level.