Having turned 60 two months ago, I know there’s nothing quite like a milestone birthday to force you to get serious about your priorities and your future.
The HIV response is facing our own wakeup call this Dec. 1 as we mark the 30th World AIDS Day – a milestone I never imagined we would reach when I started working in HIV, 30 years ago.
I have spent more than half of my life working in the HIV response, and while our goals have remained unchanged – reducing HIV infections and keeping people healthy – they have sometimes felt lofty and long-term. Something to strive toward, but always just out of reach. That is no longer the case.
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This concept – treatment as prevention – is not new. Researchers at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS coined the term in 2006 when they published data showing that increased access to modern HIV treatments was often accompanied by a decrease in new HIV infections. In some countries, governments took the concept and ran with it.
Swaziland, the country with the highest HIV prevalence in the world, has doubled the number of people on HIV treatment since 2011. Researchers announced this year that new HIV infections were cut in half over the same period.
But for this approach to work, there are two key challenges to overcome: People need to know their HIV status, and those who are diagnosed HIV-positive need to have access to treatment and care.
In Canada, we are falling behind on both of these measures. One out of every five HIV-positive Canadians doesn’t even know they have the virus. Among Canadians who have been diagnosed, only three out of four are accessing treatment.