B.C.’s health ministry used Sunday’s World AIDS Day to announce the number of new annual HIV cases has fallen to a record low in the province.
Health Minister Adrian Dix made the announcement at the opening of a new research laboratory in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside dedicated to combating and eventually eliminating the deadly virus, which will be managed by the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BCCfE).
“We are now at a moment in B.C. history where we can say the HIV/AIDS crisis has transitioned from an epidemic to chronic disease management,” Dix said.
According to the province, 2018 saw just 208 new diagnoses of HIV, the latest in a steady decline from 437 cases in 2004.
At the height of the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s and early ’90s, close to 850 cases were being reported annually, Dix said.