But the international team said the picture was very different in many other countries.
"In too many settings in 2012, MSM still do not have access to the most basic of HIV services and technologies such as affordable and accessible condoms, appropriate lubricants and safe HIV testing and counselling," they said.
"The struggle for equity in HIV services is likely to be inseparably linked to the struggle for sexual minority rights—and hence to be both a human rights struggle, and in many countries, a civil rights one."
The paper, published on the eve of the international Aids 2012 conference, adds that by the end of 2011, only 87 countries had reported prevalence of HIV in MSM.
Data is most sparse in the Middle East and Africa, where homosexual activity is a criminal offence.
The researchers call for same-sex relations to be decriminalised in all countries, so that a true picture of the scale of HIV in men who have sex with men can be ascertained.
A spokeswoman for the UK's Terrence Higgins Trust said: "We've got to have community leaders and people with influence speaking out.
"That's why what Desmond Tutu is saying is so important."
And she said it was right to focus efforts on men who have sex with men, in all countries.
She added: "In London, one in seven gay men has HIV."
-BBC
