dr julio montaner

 

An expansion in the numbers of people with HIV in the Canadian province of British Columbia diagnosed and on treatment has started to produce modest reductions in HIV diagnoses and in the average viral load in the community, the 17^th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) heard today.

The trends seen were similar to those reported from San Francisco in a similar presentation the previous day – see this report.

In 2008 the health minister for British Columbia announced that the province would pursue an aggressive ‘test and treat’ strategy in order to reap the public health benefit of reducing the average viral load in people with HIV.

However Dr Julio Montaner of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the prime mover behind this strategy, told the conference that the ‘second wave’ of increased HAART (highly active antiretroviral treatment) coverage actually started prior to the adoption of this strategy, which in itself does not appear to have further increased access.