When 6,000 international experts in HIV/AIDS start arriving in Vancouver today for a biennial conference, many will optimistically talk about this point in time as pivotal.

As the beginning of the end of AIDS.

B.C. has had such remarkable success arresting acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, that in the past 25 years, new cases have steadily dropped and are now 90 per cent below what they were at the beginning of the epidemic. New diagnoses of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, have likewise fallen, making HIV an uncommon disease in B.C. now, with 261 people diagnosed in 2014. AIDS cases are rare (about 60 last year) and deaths (44) even more so, according to the BC Centre for Disease Control and other provincial resources.

Still, about 12,000 are living with HIV/AIDS in B.C., having been diagnosed sometime in the past.

So what will so many scientists, researchers and advocates be talking about when they attend the July 19 to 22 International AIDS Society Conference on Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention? For one, the global burden of the disease. The AIDS pandemic could “end” by the year 2030, according to experts. But there are still about 34 million people around the world with HIV/AIDS, the majority (70 per cent) in Sub Saharan African countries. And although cases are falling in wealthy countries like Canada, incremental increases are happening on a global level, year over year, as shown by data from the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

B.C.’s success in halting the HIV/AIDS epidemic is viewed as a model for other jurisdictions. It came about through a dedicated B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CFE) based at St. Paul’s Hospital. It still has about 300 clinicians and researchers who’ve done groundbreaking research showing, among other things, that large-scale testing for HIV, along with early diagnosis and free, timely access to antiviral treatment, helps stop the spread of disease and virtually eliminates deaths from AIDS.

The strategy is called Treatment as Prevention and while B.C. was once one of the worst affected by the epidemic, incidence (new infection) rates per 100,000 population for HIV have in recent years been lower in B.C. relative to the Canadian rate.

The B.C. government will spend $130 million this year on HIV/AIDS testing, treatment, research and prevention.

Dr. Julio Montaner, the world renowned director of the BC-CFE, said in an interview that B.C. is the only province to fund the full array of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), which, on average, costs about $15,000 per year per patient. He credits the Treatment as Prevention strategy for profoundly reducing HIV transmission.

There are about 7,000 patients in B.C. (13 million around the world) on drug treatment to prevent HIV from converting to AIDS, and to also halt the spread of disease to those with whom they are intimate. As Montaner notes, treatment works not just on an individual level but also on a whole population level, which is why he believes the provision of medications to all people infected with HIV is a no-brainer, good public policy.