The Inner Sydney district, once the epicentre of Australia’s HIV epidemic, could be very near becoming the primary place on the planet to achieve the UN’s goal for ending transmission of the virus, researchers said on Monday.

UNAIDS has set a goal of ending AIDS as a world health threat by 2030, which incorporates reducing the number of recent HIV cases by 90% in comparison with 2010.

In inner Sydney, recent infections amongst gay men dropped by 88% from 2010 to 2022, researchers announced on the International AIDS Society’s HIV science conference being held within the Australian city of Brisbane.

Andrew Grulich, an epidemiologist on the University of Recent South Wales who presented the research, told AFP that “we’re very nearly there” some eight years ahead of the 2030 goal.

Just 11 recent HIV cases were recorded in inner Sydney last yr, “an awfully small variety of infections for what was the center of the Australian HIV epidemic,” Grulich said.

Gay men make up an estimated 20% of the male population in inner Sydney, they usually represent the big majority of the town’s HIV cases.

Grulich said that several areas within the UK and Western Europe have also seen rapid drops in recent HIV cases.

But “I do not think anywhere has gotten near 90%,” he added.

Since Sydney has “virtually” already reached the goal, that shows that it is possible goal, he said.

Nonetheless Grulich emphasised that this doesn’t mean that HIV is near being eliminated in the town of greater than 5.2 million people.

“HIV can only be eliminated if we’ve a vaccine and a cure,” he said.

And the drop in recent HIV cases was far less precipitous in other parts of Sydney.

In the town’s outer suburbs, recent cases have only fallen by 31% since 2010, the researchers found.

This disparity was because of a much rate higher of HIV testing and use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) — which reduces the danger of transmitting HIV during sex — within the inner city, Grulich said.

He said one other cause for progress was that around 95% of HIV-positive people in Australia at the moment are on antiretroviral treatment, which suppresses the extent of the virus within the blood.

One other study announced on the AIDS conference, which was published in The Lancet journal, said that folks on antiretrovirals who’ve low but detectible levels of HIV have almost zero risk of sexually transmitting the virus to others.

The Sydney research, which has not been peer-reviewed, was based on data from the Recent South Wales health department in addition to annual surveys taken by gay men about their use of antiretrovirals, PrEP and testing.

Grulich said the progress in inner Sydney was particularly significant because “this was a community that was completely devastated within the 80s and 90s — a couple of thousand men died in these areas”.