Research presented to the 23rd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2020: Virtual) last week on ‘Undetectable = Untransmittable’ (U=U) indicates varying levels of awareness and acceptance of this powerful message, despite the conclusive finding that people living with HIV who have an undetectable viral cannot infect others.
Launched in mid-2016 by activists and researchers in New York City, the community-led U=U movement has engaged more than 1000 organisations from 100 countries and key populations on every continent. In a plenary presentation, Dayana Hernandez from Transvida, an organisation offering services to transgender women in Costa Rica, emphasised the central role of civil society organisations who work with people living with HIV in spreading the U=U message. However, she also said that governments need to endorse U=U for it to have maximum impact on stigma reduction and as a way of preventing HIV infections.
This has happened in Vietnam. Asia Nguyen, from the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in Vietnam, shared how both the Ministry of Health and community leaders there have embraced U=U as a central component of overall HIV prevention efforts, in addition to using it to reduce stigma. This has included challenging misperceptions of HIV and communicating the importance of U=U to people living with HIV, younger men who have sex with men (MSM), reluctant health professionals, and the broader public through tailored advertising campaigns, starting at a community level and progressing to a national campaign.