World AIDS Day not necessarily an occasion to celebrate, says local researcher

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It’s been thirty years since World AIDS Day was launched – something that is marked every year on December 1st.

While it’s a day to recognize advances in the treatment of the potentially fatal condition, a Vancouver researcher is airing his frustration about the lack of progress on an ambitious goal he had set a few years ago.

Back in 2015, Julio Montaner, director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, worked with the UN-AIDS program to get global leaders to agree that the AIDS pandemic could be ended by 2030.

It’s based on a ‘Treatment as Prevention’ strategy used in BC – to identify people with HIV and get them onto anti-retroviral drugs before the virus can be spread to others.

At the UN level, the strategy had a ’90-90-90′ formula. The goal was to identify 90 per cent of the people worldwide with HIV, to offer 90 per cent of the infected with the appropriate treatment, and to have 90 per cent of people on treatment reduce their viral loads. A lower viral load reduces the chances an HIV positive person can spread the virus.

But three years into the experiment, Montaner says there is complacency among global leaders.

“To be honest with you, I’m starting to worry that people are not paying attention. This is an opportunity of a lifetime to see the end of the pandemic,” he says.

“I’m not sure their hearts are in the right place at this time. If we don’t redouble our effort, this is not going to look very good.”

In fact, he points out in some regions of the world, HIV infection rates are increasing.

“There are at least 50 countries in the last report issued by UN-AIDS where new HIV infections have actually gone the wrong way – up.”

According to UN-AIDS, Russia’s HIV epidemic is growing. New infections are rising by between 10 and 15 per cent each year.

Ukraine, meantime, has the second-largest HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia is the only region in the world where annual rate of HIV infections continues to rise at a concerning rate.

“This attitude that we’re going to improve only our own backyards is a fallacy. Pandemic diseases don’t know borders. HIV travels across borders silently. To solve the HIV problem, I have to solve the problem in other regions. We are in this together,” says Montaner.

Some recent stats from UN-AIDS:

• 36.9 million people are living with HIV
• 21.7 million people with HIV are being treated with anti-retroviral drugs
• 1.8 million people were infected with HIV in 2017