Australia has joined a small number of countries to have successfully beaten AIDS as the country’s leading scientists declare the end of the epidemic as a public health issue. Researchers from the Kirby and Peter Doherty institutes and the AIDS organisation have announced Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is no more as the number of Australians being diagnosed is so low, ABC News reported.
AIDS cases in Australia dropped significantly after anti-retroviral medication was introduced in the mid-1990s.
The medication stops HIV from turning into AIDS, where the immune system is so badly damaged that it cannot fight infection.
In the early 1990s when the syndrome was at its peak, about 1,000 Australians died each year from AIDS.
The number of cases is so few now that the figure is not even recorded, according to Professor Andrew Grulich, head of the HIV Epidemiology and Prevention Program at the Kirby Institute.
‘These days we don’t even monitor it, it’s a transitory thing for most people- people have AIDS, then they go on treatment and they don’t have AIDS anymore,’ he told ABC News.
He told the publication the progression on the fight against the syndrome was ‘nothing short of miraculous.’
