At the end of 2014, three million more people were living with HIV/AIDS than had died from the disease since 1984, when it was first diagnosed.
The eye-popping juxtaposition speaks to the scale of the epidemic and medical advances made against what had been an automatic death sentence. As 6,000 experts in the fight against HIV/AIDS gather at a landmark conference in Vancouver this week, the focus will be on endorsing and funding the so-called “treatment as prevention” model that affords patients a normal, productive life and drastically reduces the likelihood they will spread the disease.
First championed by researchers like Canadian Dr. Julio Montaner in Vancouver in 1996, the model calls for the immediate use of antiretroviral drug therapy, upon diagnosis, to suppress the virus before it compromises a patient’s immune system.
It’s the best hope, the only hope, because there is still no cure for a disease that has claimed 34 million lives worldwide. Patients die when their immune systems are so weakened by the virus that they can no longer fight off infections like tuberculosis or meningitis, or some types of cancer, such as lymphoma.
The treatment has transformed HIV/AIDS into a manageable though chronic condition, and has put eradication within reach of this generation. Even so, it is not yet available to all patients – indeed only 15 million of the 37 million people living with HIV/AIDS were receiving antiretroviral treatments in March.
That is no longer an acceptable ratio.
Montaner was among the signatories to the Vancouver Consensus, released Sunday, which declared “a new transformative moment in the fight to end AIDS” and implored governments to accept the science and act swiftly. It states that studies conducted over the past decade show immediate access to antiretroviral drugs is effective on two crucial fronts: It more than doubles a patient’s prospects of survival and good health, and it prevents transmission to HIV-negative partners.
“Medical evidence is clear: All people living with HIV must have access to antiretroviral treatment upon diagnosis,” the document states. “Barriers to access in law, policy, and bias must be confronted and dismantled,” the document reads.