The Washington State Department of Health announced this week that it’s joined the HIV prevention campaign Undetectable = Untransmittable, also known as U = U.
U = U strives to describe the scientific findings that people living with HIV, who have undetectable levels of HIV in their blood, have effectively no risk of transmitting HIV to their partner, according to a media release from the DOH. This concept is known as “treatment as prevention,” because treatment keeps people in this situation from transmitting the virus.
“People living with HIV continue to live with the stigma that they are infectious and possibly harmful to their partners. This new evidence is critical to changing public perception of HIV transmissibility,” said John Wiesman, Washington’s secretary of health, in the media release.
As work to end AIDS continues in the state, DOH officials highlight certain prevention methods and labels them “crucial.” Those include promoting consistent and correct condom use, routine HIV screening, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV. The Center for Disease Control describes both PrEP and PEP as medication that can dramatically reduce the risk of HIV infection in a high-risk individual.
Washington is the sixth state health department to join the campaign, along with 18 other state and local health departments and more than 700 organizations from 90 countries. According to the release, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health endorse the science behind U = U.
