Key findings
- Although the hepatitis B vaccination program is successfully reaching coverage of approximately 95% among infants, there are still 1530 – 2600 new incident cases of hepatitis B occurring annually.
- Data indicate that hepatitis C incidence ranges between 5 and 22 per 100 person-years among people who inject drugs (PWID) but there is no evidence of a decreasing or increasing time trend.
- There is reasonably strong evidence that HIV incidence across Australia has recently stabilised at around 4.6 per 100,000 population after increasing trends.
- Gonorrhoea is a two pronged epidemic. The available evidence for gonorrhoea incidence suggests that incidence may be increasing for men who have sex with men, with the notification rate in men increasing 26%
- to over 60 per 100,000 population.
- The available evidence for chlamydia incidence is weak, but suggestive that incidence is likely to be slightly increasing. Positivity levels increased by more than 5% in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and young heterosexual women, and lesser amounts in other priority groups.