When a U.S. doctor at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre announced she appeared to have cured a baby of the HIV virus, headlines roared that it could be a major discovery. However, Dr. Julio Montaner, the Director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said in an interview with Yahoo! Canada News that it’s too soon to declare the baby cured of the virus and there isn’t enough research to call the case a breakthrough.
He says the story could still be valuable in that it illustrates a lesson he’s been trying to teach for years: early treatment drastically improves the lives of HIV patients. A study published in the journal PLoS Pathogens on Thursday supports his point and takes it further, saying early HIV treatment could functionally cure the virus.
Montaner says we need a national strategy to reach more of these patients and get them treatment, so their babies are never born with HIV in the first place. But with sex and drugs at its core, HIV is a political loser for our federal government, Dr. Montaner says – and our politicians are ignoring an epidemic.
Here are some excerpts from the interview.