Queensland promises to end HIV transmission by 2020

MARK COLVIN: Queensland is the first state in Australia to sign up to a new HIV treatment program which promises to eliminate HIV and AIDS in our lifetime.

Researchers in British Columbia in Canada developed the program in the late 1990s.

Known as the Treatment as Prevention Strategy, it’s dramatically decreased AIDS cases.

The announcement was made at the AIDS 2014 Conference in Melbourne.

Alison Caldwell reports.

ALISON CALDWELL: Queensland is aiming to eliminate the transmission of HIV by 2020.

Today the Newman Government announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Canada’s British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS to do just that.

…

Dr Julio Montaner developed the strategy formally in 2006.

JULIO MONTANER: The world has come to realise that the best, if not the only, way that we have to truly control this epidemic is to optimally employ everything that we have available. 

But critically, to expand rapidly access to antiretroviral therapy, optimal antiretroviral therapy, with full biological suppression, which will really lead to full prevention of morbidity, mortality, tuberculosis and HIV transmission.

ALISON CALDWELL: Is it realistic to believe that Queensland could eliminate this by 2020?

JULIO MONTANER: If you define elimination as decreasing disease burden by greater than 90 per cent, the answer is yes.

Alison Caldwell
PM with Mark Colvin
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