Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS at St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver is adamant he can rid the province of HIV/ AIDS within a generation.
Internationally recognized as a leader in his field, he’s already saved thousands of lives by creating the world’s first anti-HIV cocktail, a treatment known as Highly Active Retroviral Therapy or HAART for short. HAART is recognized around the world as the go-to solution in turning a deadly epidemic into a chronic but manageable condition.
“It stops the replication of the virus,” says Montaner. “The day I give you HAART, the HIV virus stops multiplying. It allows your immunity to come back and you live a near-normal life as long as you take the medication.”
Born in Buenos Aires in 1956, Montaner didn’t set out to be a medical hero. He wanted to be a clinical researcher specializing in chest medicine like his father, a distinguished respiratory clinician in Argentina, but independent of him too. Montaner arrived in Vancouver in 1981 after attending a medical conference in Ecuador.