Sunday’s closing plenary session looked forward to some significant opportunities for the HIV/AIDS movement in the near future, including applying recent scientific advances and scaling up treatment as prevention, the 2012 International AIDS Conference, and implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and past president of the International AIDS Society, discussed the idea of treatment as prevention, sharing findings from his research in British Columbia. That research showed that as they expanded the number of HIV positive individuals on highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), there was a corresponding reduction the number of new HIV infections. This reduction occurred because, Dr. Montaner explained, HAART stops viral replication, which, in turn, causes HIV levels fall to undetectable levels in blood as well as in sexual fluids making transmission of the virus much less likely. Dr. Montaner suggested that expanded HAART coverage is now among the strongest tools in the combination prevention toolbox.
“This is about treating people who need life saving therapy; but, if we do it right, we can stop the epidemic,” he said. He praised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgment of treatment as prevention as integral to the global fight against AIDS in her speech last week about creating an AIDS-free generation.