From The Lancet : “The fact that HIV treatment has advanced to the point that people infected with HIV can live full-length, healthy lives with zero chance of sexually transmitting the virus to others as long as they are on effective ART is a huge success. Although evidence for this fact has been growing since 2000, it has been slow to influence public perception.”
“However, the U=U campaign, launched just under 2 years ago now, has been directly tasked with tackling this unfortunate public ignorance, and to flying success in its fairly short lifespan to date. The slogan embodies the idea of treatment as prevention. This idea has been around since at least 2010, but since the easy-to-grasp U=U slogan has been established, the concept has been firmly pushed into the public sphere and has been a major talking point in the HIV/AIDS community this year. The CDC officially backing the science behind the campaign is another key step towards U=U being the most important message of 2017 in the fight against HIV.”
“U=U is a simple but hugely important campaign based on a solid foundation of scientific evidence. It has already been successful in influencing public opinion, causing more people with HIV (and their friends and families) to comprehend that they can live long, healthy lives, have children, and never have to worry about passing on their infection to others. The clarity of the message will make it easier to promote the undeniable benefits of treatment, which will encourage more and more people with HIV to seek treatment, bringing the HIV community one step closer to achievement of the UNAIDS’ 90-90-90 target by 2020 and to complete elimination of the entirely unfair and outdated stigma still faced by many people living with HIV today.” Download a copy . Read the full text.
