He’s considered a global leader in HIV/AIDS research, and today he was acknowledged for his efforts.
Vancouver’s Dr. Julio Montaner was one of six British Columbians named to the Order of Canada on Thursday.
“I want to share my gratitude to the province of British Columbia for their unwavering support over the last three decades that we’ve been doing this work.”
Montaner remembers back at the height of the HIV/AIDS scare of how everyone treated and looked at the illness.
“We didn’t know what it was or where it came from or if there was a way out of it. Over the last three decades we went from a very dark era to partial enlightenment with our discovery of the triple therapy cocktail radically changing the standard of care for HIV/AIDS.”
The standard he set calls for 90 per cent of people living with HIV to be successfully diagnosed and 90 per cent to receive treatment, which would help create 90 per cent biological suppression by 2020.
Montaner says in the last twenty years AIDS cases and HIV-related deaths in B.C. have gone down 80 per cent.