HIV

Harm reduction has resulted to seek a decline in illicit drug use. It has improved public safety as once Ground Zero for an HIV and overdose epidemic claimed many lives, according to a 15-year study of drug use in Vancouver's impoverished Downtown Eastside.

Vancouver has hosted the International HIV Treatment as Prevention Workshop before, but this time feels different to Dr. Julio Montaner. For the first time, foreign governments are sending high-ranking dignitaries to attend the conference to learn more about the made-in-Vancouver strategy that could pave the way for an AIDS-free generation.

British Columbian researchers have found that women with HIV-AIDS are more likely than men to receive sub-standard care and treatment, putting them at higher risk of death or transmission to others. The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS conducted two studies to try to find out why the number of new cases of HIV-AIDS among women has been trending upwards.

When a U.S. doctor at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre announced she appeared to have cured a baby of the HIV virus, headlines roared that it could be a major discovery. However, Dr. Julio Montaner, the Director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said in an interview with Yahoo! Canada News that it’s too soon to declare the baby cured of the virus and there isn’t enough research to call the case a breakthrough.

From the 2013 Influencer Index: This doctor from Argentina has changed the face of HIV/AIDS treatment since moving to B.C. This Argentinian transplant arrived in B.C. for a post-doctoral fellowship at UBC just as the HIV/AIDS epidemic detonated in the early 1980s. In his three decades in the province, Dr. Julio Montaner has helped remove the disease’s stigma and saved millions of lives.