Australia’s HIV-prevention response introduction to the special issue

Australia is relatively unique in having, until recently, sustained an effective response to HIV in all of its affected communities. The first case of AIDS was diagnosed in 1982 in a gay man in Sydney, and between 1982 and 1985 HIV spread rapidly, with an estimated 4,500 men being infected, predominantly in the gay community in Sydney and to a lesser extent in Melbourne. The majority of these infections took place at a time when relatively little was known scientifically about HIV (then known as HTLV-III). In consequence, men within the gay community and their friends were forced to look to their own resourcesorganizing politically and socially, and drawing upon experience both at home and elsewhere in the world, to mount what in retrospect is perhaps best seen as something of a social revolution among gay and other homosexually active men. The difficulty of these early struggles should not be underestimated, especially since homosexual behavior between men remained illegal in many states in Australia until the mid 1980s, and into the 1990s in Queensland and Tasmania.