September 28, 2017 BY imani leave a comment
Yesterday was National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, and for the first time ever The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) put out a declarative statement saying when an HIV-positive person’s viral load is undetectable, there is no chance of transmission of the virus to a HIV negative partner.
This is first time ever the CDC has corroborated what organizations and experts in the field have been saying for years.
The statement says the following:
“Scientific advances have shown that antiretroviral therapy (ART) preserves the health of people living with HIV. We also have strong evidence of the prevention effectiveness of ART. When ART results in viral suppression, defined as less than 200 copies/ml or undetectable levels, it prevents sexual HIV transmission.
Across three different studies, including thousands of couples and many thousand acts of sex without a condom or pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), no HIV transmissions to an HIV-negative partner were observed when the HIV-positive person was virally suppressed. This means that people who take ART daily as prescribed and achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner.”
That is the scientific way of saying that an HIV positive person who seek treatment and eventually control the virus to the point of not being detectable in tests cannot pass on the virus, even when protection is not used.
While the memo noted that 26,000 gay and bisexual men received an HIV diagnosis in 2015, making up two-thirds of all diagnoses, efforts to stop the epidemic do seem to be having some effects.
The CDC noted that some of the successful efforts to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS have included better funding for health departments and community-based organizations, like MASS who educate about PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) and PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis), as well as supporting projects to identify prevention strategies, and funding its own information campaigns.
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