Australia nears an end to HIV after 40 years of testing

Forty years after HIV screening first became available in Australia, the nation is closer than ever to eliminating transmission of the virus - a milestone unimaginable in the dark early years of the epidemic.

New data from the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW shows diagnoses have plummeted 53 per cent among those born in Australia in the past decade with 757 cases reported nationwide in 2024.

There was no reduction for people born overseas, so the drop among the whole cohort was brought down to 27 per cent once those figures were taken into account.

The long-term trend is downward, even though numbers have risen slightly in the past two years.

Experts say the recent uptick reflects a rebound in testing and behaviour after the COVID-19 pandemic rather than a reversal of the over