Australia: People With HIV More Likely to Be Below the Poverty Line

Twenty-seven percent of HIV-infected Australians live below the poverty line, in most cases as a result of their disease, a recent report found. Dr. Jeffrey Grierson and colleagues tracked the lives of 1,000 Australians living with HIV and found that although advanced treatments have made the disease more manageable, the financial impact is still great.

According to the report, while new treatments allow more HIV-positive people to return to the workplace, at least 54 percent are reliant on government benefits. "Financial hardship is partly to do with access to employment but it is also the compound of living with HIV long term," said Grierson. "There's the lack of increased opportunity in employment and the extra costs associated, which aren't covered by Medicare, like counseling and the costs of dealing with the side effects of treatment," he added.

Though 71 percent of Australians living with HIV are on some type of antiretroviral therapy, at least 77 percent of these have experienced difficulties with the treatments, the report found. "This is consistent with the findings from previous surveys and reminds us that we are far from having a solution to the problem," said Grierson. "When you add to this the finding that 44 percent of this sample has another major health condition, such as cardiovascular disease or hepatitis C, it is not surprising that HIV is still having a major impact on people's lives."

Grierson said 17 percent of study participants reported discrimination by a health-care provider in the last two years.

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