PUBLISHED: 14 Oct 2024 at 05: 09
Nations from Africa and the Caribbean should support the evidence-based U=U message and incorporate U=U into efforts to prevent, diagnose and treat HIV, says Institute of HIV Research and Innovation ( IHRI ) executive director, Nittaya Phanuphak.
The “knowledge” to which she refers is the concept of invisible = untransmittable, or U=U for little.
Next year the World Health Organization endorsed the process, stressing that when a victim’s viral load is invisible, there is zero possibility of sexual transmission.
At a recent conference in Bangkok, Dr. Nittaya addressed attendees from society organizations and governments dealing with HIV.
They were members from Botswana, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia.
They traveled to Bangkok as part of a learning change facilitated by the Global Partnership for Action to Eliminate all Kinds of HIV-related Stigma and Discrimination.
Dr. Nittaya said in her comment to the audience that she remembered that a queer Thai man who lived with HIV in a Facebook post in 2020 sparked controversy.
She claimed that he had performed laboratory tests to check the virus stage in his bloodstream because he had been receiving antiretroviral therapy.
Since his viral load was invisible, he wrote, he was going to quit using condoms, she said.
The response to the post was met with hatred and disbelief from the general public, which led to a conversation that spread from social media and gained national radio and television, she said.
” There was a great backlash”, Dr Nittaya said, adding that she and her father, Dr Praphan, leader of an Aids research institute, thought it was their duty to contribute to the open discussion.
While the man’s approach might have been innovative, the technology behind his speech was noise, she said.
Dr Praphan diagnosed Thailand’s second HIV event in 1985 and dedicated his life to HIV study, service delivery and advocacy, she said.
He co-founded the Thai Red Cross Aids Research Centre, which in 2014, conducted cutting-edge analysis as part of the Opposite Attract Study, she said.
The study, which was conducted in Australia, Brazil, and Thailand, tracked people where one individual was HIV-negative and the other was living with HIV but had successfully recovered from an invisible viral load, according to Dr. Nittaya.
She said it confirmed that there were no cases of HIV distribution between more than 300 people after two centuries of unprotected sex.
” It’s a scientific fact”, Dr Nittaya said.
” For me, I felt like we actually needed to do something. We ca n’t wait for this knowledge to gradually enter Thai society over the next 50 years.
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