Experts converge on Vancouver for international AIDS conference
When 6,000 international experts in HIV/AIDS start arriving in Vancouver today for a biennial conference, many will optimistically talk about this point in time as pivotal.
As the beginning of the end of AIDS.
B.C. has had such remarkable success arresting acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, that in the past 25 years, new cases have steadily dropped and are now 90 per cent below what they were at the beginning of the epidemic. New diagnoses of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, have likewise fallen, making HIV an uncommon disease in B.C. now, with 261 people diagnosed in 2014. AIDS cases are rare (about 60 last year) and deaths (44) even more so, according to the BC Centre for Disease Control and other provincial resources.
Still, about 12,000 are living with HIV/AIDS in B.C., having been diagnosed sometime in the past.
So what will so many scientists, researchers and advocates be talking about when they attend the July 19 to 22 International AIDS Society Conference on Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention? For one, the global burden of the disease. The AIDS pandemic could “end” by the year 2030, according to experts. But there are still about 34 million people around the world with HIV/AIDS, the majority (70 per cent) in Sub Saharan African countries. And although cases are falling in wealthy countries like Canada, incremental increases are happening on a global level, year over year, as shown by data from the World Health Organization and UNICEF.