England is on course to have eradicated HIV in homosexual men by 2030, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge.
Data shows that the annual number of new HIV infections among men who have sex with men in England fell from 2,770 in 2013 to 854 in 2018.
This encouraging trend is reason to believe England will reach the United Nations target of eliminating HIV transmission among “men who have sex with men” by 2030, researchers have said.
Elimination of viral transmission is defined as less than one newly-acquired infection per 10,000 homosexual men annually.
Observing new HIV infections is difficult so scientists from the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge, alongside Public Health England, made their own method.
It combines cases clocked on the HIV and AIDS Reporting System in England and also takes into account known trends and progression of the disease.
The calculations are published in the journal The Lancet HIV and estimate the peak of HIV infections since 2011 to have been between 2012 and 2013.
But new cases dropped from 2,770 new infections in 2013 to 1,740 in 2015, and a further steadier decrease from 2016, down to 854 in 2018, the last year for which there is data.
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