Today B.C. pats itself on the back for progress its made on HIV/AIDS, but Vancouver’s ground-breaking work emerged from a crisis
A little more than 20 years after Vancouver became known internationally as the city with the “highest HIV-infection rate in the Western World,” the provincial government has said B.C. now “nears the end of the AIDS epidemic”.
On World AIDS Day (December 1), the province announced that 2018 saw a record-low number of new HIV cases in B.C.
“With the success of the Treatment as Prevention strategy (TasP), B.C. is seen as the having the world’s gold standard to profoundly reduce HIV transmission and transition the crisis from a serious epidemic to a manageable chronic disease,” B.C. health minister Adrian Dix said quoted in a media release.
It’s noted there that the number of new HIV infections recorded in B.C. has fallen consistently from 437 cases in 2004 to 205 in 2018.
TaSP was pioneered in Vancouver’s West End at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BCCfE) under the leadership of Dr. Julio Montaner. In 2014, the United Nations adopted its 90-90-90 targets-90 percent of people living with HIV know their status, 90 percent of people diagnosed with HIV receive antiretroviral therapy, and 90 percent of people receiving antiretroviral therapy achieve viral suppression-as the world’s best chance to end the global AIDS epidemic.