Business in Vancouver’s Lifesciences issue, out in October, profiled BC-CfE Executive Director & Physician-in-Chief Dr. Julio Montaner. In the profile, the history of Dr. Montaner’s career is traced from his arrival in Vancouver from Argentina in the 1980s, to the creation of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), up to the global spread of the cost-saving strategy of Treatment as Prevention¨ (TasP¨) .
The made-in-BC TasP¨ strategy has been supported by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) since 2011, and helped to inspire an ambitious global target of 90-90-90. That target is 90% of people of people living with HIV must be diagnosed, 90% of people of those diagnosed must be on treatment, and 90% of those on treatment must have an undetectable viral load by 2020.
Despite being adopted by the UN and other countries, no other Canadian province is guided by TasP¨ for its HIV/AIDS care programs.
To this, Dr. Montaner said, “It takes political will. Because we were the most affected province, and had a smaller population than some other provinces, it was easier for us to move ahead with this.”
Dr. Montaner and the staff of the BC-CfE hope to replicate the success of TasP¨ by applying its principles to other diseases like hepatitis C, opioid use disorder, and psychosis.