Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - November 30, 2004
The numbers, compiled by the AIDS Epidemiology Group at Otago University, showed 23 women and four children diagnosed with the HIV infection this year. All the infected children were born with the disease.
The total of HIV cases diagnosed in 2004 was almost identical to 2003's tally of 109, acting director of Public Health Doug Lush said, as the figures were released to coincide with World AIDS Day.
The figures showed 50 of the year's cases involved men who had sex with men, with 36 of them thought to have been infected in New Zealand. Of the rest, 46 (23 men and 23 women) were infected by heterosexual contact.
"Traditionally we have tended to think of HIV and AIDS as illnesses affecting men who have sex with men, and injecting drug users," Lush said in a statement.
AIDS Foundation executive director Rachael Le Mesurier said it was significant that the new cases of "heterosexually transmitted infections have been roughly the same as homosexually transmitted cases for the past five years. There is obviously potential for the balance to change."
Lush said New Zealand had been lucky.
"We do not have the devastating rates of disease affecting some other countries, and neither has AIDS here developed as a heterosexual epidemic in the way many observers earlier feared it might," he said.
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