B.C. spends more than $100 million a year providing anti-HIV drugs free to eligible patients, helping boost the uptake to 85 per cent of those with HIV on Vancouver Island.
Only four years ago, just 56 per cent of B.C.’s HIV patients received highly active anti-retroviral treatment, which plays a major role in reducing transmission of the virus, said Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
HAART drugs, which Montaner helped pioneer, reduce the viral load in people with HIV to undetectable levels, he said.
“If your partner is HIV undetectable on treatment, you have a greater than 95 per cent chance of being protected,” even without use of a condom, he said. The truer estimate is probably much greater than 95 per cent, based on thousands of people studied for several years, he added.
HAART costs about $15,000 per patient, per year.
The fact that the Ministry of Health picks up the full tab for each person is “incredibly good,” said Katrina Jensen, executive director of AIDS Vancouver Island. Other provinces do not.
The B.C. policy means that AVI and other groups can concentrate on breaking barriers to treatment without worrying about the cost of the treatment itself, she said.
Barriers include outdated beliefs that treatment requires complicated drug cocktails and dozens of pills taken several times a day. The reality is that some HIV patients need to take only one pill per day, others several, Jensen said.
B.C. is the only province where new HIV cases are in significant decline, says the ministry, and provincewide uptake of HAART drugs has reached 73 per cent.
However, just being in treatment doesn’t necessarily mean a person is adhering to the HAART regime or indicate the level of viral suppression, noted Sophie Bannar-Martin, HIV/AIDS co-ordinator for Island Health.
In south Vancouver Island, about 70 per cent of people receiving HIV treatment have achieved suppression of the virus in their blood, Jensen said. People who receive support at Cool Aid Community Health and AVI have a much higher rate of viral load suppression – about 95 per cent, she said.