Via CBC News: B.C. seeks to wipe out HIV/AIDS with new campaign. Excerpt:
Medical experts in B.C. are seeking to have every person in the province who has ever been sexually active tested for HIV/AIDS, saying the initiative could be "the beginning of the end" of the disease.
Key to the strategy is a test that can reveal in less than one minute whether or not someone is HIV-positive, which was demonstrated at a Vancouver medical conference Wednesday.
"Everybody should be tested,” said Ken Buchanan, of the advocacy group Positive Living BC. “Obviously, the people in more high risk situations should be tested more often, but everybody should be tested."
One of the leading experts in the province, Dr. Julio Montaner, says the widespread testing will lead to a very big result.
"Elimination of HIV is possible,” said Montaner, Director of B.C.'s Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.
New data shows that recent initiatives to offer all B.C. hospital patients an AIDS test resulted in one per cent of those tested finding out they're HIV-positive.
Montaner said that extrapolating those statistics to the entire B.C. population could mean there are another 3,500 people in the province who are HIV-positive and don’t yet know it.
A new advertising campaign also revealed at the conference declares that the testing initiative could be "the beginning of the end of HIV."
