Four decades after the first cases, we have strategies and tools that would allow us to control the epidemic. However, every year people who might not be infected continue to be infected and people who might not die continue to die. Are we going to continue to miss the opportunity?
In our country, around 98 percent of infections are caused by unprotected sex. However, the implementation of the Comprehensive Sex Education (ESI) law continues to be uneven. It is possible to access an HIV diagnosis for free and in less than 20 minutes through a drop of blood obtained from a finger prick. But almost 40 percent of women and almost 60 percent of men without studies or with incomplete primary school access their diagnosis late. For its part, this figure is reduced to just over 10 percent of women and just over 20 percent of men who have a complete university education.
Current treatments make it possible to achieve a good quality of life and turn the infection into a chronic condition. To this is added that we know that Undetectable is equal to untransmittable. This means that a person with HIV in treatment who maintains his undetectable viral load in a sustained way does not transmit the virus through sexual intercourse.
However, around 1,300 people die each year in Argentina from HIV-related causes.
The right to health is directly interrelated with other problems such as the reduction of inequality, gender equity, social protection and economic growth. If we have learned anything in these 40 years, it is that the HIV epidemic does nothing more than reproduce pre-existing inequalities: economic, social and cultural. We cannot control HIV without addressing inequities. Above all, of those populations most affected by the virus. It is necessary to guarantee absolute respect for human rights and eliminate stigma, discrimination, coercion and violence towards people with HIV and the most affected populations.
And if the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that no one is safe until we are all safe. It is time for each of us to become aware that HIV affects us all. The answer is today.
Scientific Director of the Huiuda Foundation
Source From: Ambito
