Having turned 60 two months ago, I know there’s nothing quite like a milestone birthday to force you to get serious about your priorities and your future. The HIV response is facing our own wake-up call Dec. 1 as we mark the 30th World AIDS Day – a milestone I never imagined we would reach when I started working in HIV 30 years ago.
I have spent half my life working in the HIV response and, while our goals have remained unchanged – reducing HIV infections and keeping people healthy – they have sometimes felt lofty and long-term. Something to strive toward but always just out of reach.
That is no longer the case. Hundreds of prominent HIV leaders and organizations have now endorsed a new consensus based on years of scientific research: a person living with HIV who takes treatment – to the point where the amount of the virus in their body is undetectable in blood tests – does not transmit the virus to their sexual partners. In short, undetectable equals untransmittable.
This new scientific consensus has tremendous implications for people living with HIV. But it also demonstrates that ending the AIDS epidemic in Canada is much more attainable than we previously thought. If treatment has the potential to eliminate the risk of HIV transmission, it cannot only save the lives of people living with HIV, but it can also be used as a tool to prevent further infections.
This concept – treatment as prevention – is not new. Researchers at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS coined the term in 2006 when they published data showing that increased access to modern HIV treatments was often accompanied by a decrease in new HIV infections.