“We have an obligation to decide whether the evidence is enough. We’ve waited too long to do what we know is right. Enough is enough. We need to move to implement.”
Acknowledging that “we have a consensus in this room but not outside this room” BCCFE’s Dr. Julio Montaner, looking dapper in a dark suit and bright red tie, opened the third annual International Treatment as Prevention Workshop in Vancouver last week.
Fitting that we should be there in his home town. Vancouver was the site of the 1996 International AIDS Conference where the advent of protease inhibitors caused such excitement, leading some to rush to predict the end of the epidemic was nigh. It wasn’t of course, but the power of those antiretrovirals launched in 1996 to not only restore health but virtually eliminate infectivity in some circumstances has led us all to the place we are at today. That place is a room of three hundred experts from all corners of the globe. There are almost 40 countries represented here, including many high ranking diplomats, scientists and health officials, not to mention people living with HIV from around the globe. We even have a Prime Minister in our midst.