Australian men picking HIV up from unsafe sex overseas

Sep 17 2008

A conference in Perth, Australia, has heard that six men in Cairns have contracted HIV after travelling to Papua New Guinea and the news has alarmed health authorities and raised concern that there may be more undetected cases in the area.

According to Dr. Darren Russell from the Cairns Sexual Health Service in far north Queensland, the six men, aged between 47 and 66 years old, tested positive to HIV after having unprotected sex with women in PNG in the past 10 months.

All had apparently visited PNG on business trips and experts say it is a worrying new trend and has been detected among miners and other workers based in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Some experts are concerned it could provide the virus with an entry into the mainstream population and say it is a wake-up call for Australia.

Professor Russell says also of concern is the border region in the Torres Strait, which is very close to Papua New Guinea and says there is concern that it is only a matter of time before cases show up there.

Gary Dowsett, deputy director of the Australia Research Centre in Sex Health and Society at Latrobe University says people need to think about their behaviour when they are travelling overseas because HIV is an epidemic.

He says the message must continue to be reinforced, that people who are sexually active when they are travelling overseas, need to be careful and safe in their sexual practices - he says this is not a new phenomenon.

Professor Russell has voiced the concern that unless men get tested, they could be undiagnosed for a long time, and pass the infection on to women across Australia.

Apparently three of the six Queensland men had regular female partners in Australia, but all the partners had tested negative for HIV.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations says there has been a 68% increase in HIV infections acquired overseas by heterosexual West Australian men between 2002-04 and 2005-07 which appears to be the result of more people travelling to Asia who are having unprotected sex with women who are HIV-positive.

In PNG and much of southeast Asia HIV has reached epidemic proportions and is raging unchecked.

Recent Australian statistics from the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, shows that the number of new HIV diagnoses rose by 5.3 per cent, from 998 in 2006 to 1051 last year.

HIV can be transmitted when blood, semen or vaginal fluid from an infected person enters the body of an uninfected person through unsafe sex - rectal, oral and vaginal and by sharing needles and injecting equipment contaminated with blood.

Mothers who are HIV positive can transmit the virus to their babies during pregnancy, during birth and when breast feeding.

HIV may also be transmitted through donated blood and blood products (all blood, organs, tissues and semen donated in Australia are screened for HIV) so that risk is low.

A blood test is the only way of detecting HIV but most people with HIV look and feel well for many years and they may not even know they are infected.