QWANZ

Insite, situated on the worst block of an area once home to the fastest-growing AIDS epidemic in North America, is one reason Vancouver is succeeding in lowering new AIDS infection rates while many other cities are only getting worse....   >>>

Insite, situated on the worst block of an area once home to the fastest-growing AIDS epidemic in North America, is one reason Vancouver is succeeding in lowering new AIDS infection rates while many other cities are only getting worse.



By offering clean needles and aggressively testing and treating those who may be infected with H.I.V., Vancouver is offering proof that an idea that was once controversial actually works: Widespread treatment, while expensive, protects not just individuals but the whole community.



Because antiretroviral medications lower the amount of virus in the blood, those taking them are estimated to be 90 percent less infective.



Pioneering work by the British Columbia Center for Excellence in H.I.V./AIDS at St. Paul’s Hospital here demonstrated that getting most of the infected onto medication could drive down the whole community’s rate of new infections.



According to one of the center’s studies, financed by the United States National Institutes of Health, from 1996 to 2009 the number of British Columbians taking the medication increased more than sixfold — to 5,413, an estimated 80 percent of those with H.I.V. The number of annual new infections dropped by 52 percent. This happened even as testing increased and syphilis rates kept rising, indicating that people were not switching in droves to condoms or abstinence.



Studies in San Francisco and Taiwan found similar results. So last July the United Nations’ AIDS-fighting agency made “test and treat” its official goal — although it acknowledged that it is only a dream, since global AIDS budgets aren’t big enough to buy medication even for all those hovering near death.



**This excerpt is taken from NYT article, "An HIV Strategy Invites Addicts In," written by Donald G. McNeil which is linked below. Do click through to read more about this ground breaking strategy to stem HIV/AIDS infection.**