Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U) Part I

 Undetectable Equals Untransmittable (U=U) Part I

 

By Daily News Reporter

 

HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is a viral infection that attacks the immune system and causes AIDS in a human being. Primary HIV is a Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD), transmitted by heterosexual meaning through sexual intercourse. Some researches indicate that HIV can also be transmitted through homosexual practices that may include anal and oral sex.

HIV/AIDS is one of the world’s most serious public health challenges. However, governments and stakeholders globally are committed to stopping new infections and ensuring that every person living with HIV has access to treatment. The cases of HIV came to be known in the early 1980s and many people got the disease and by the 1990s up to 2000s it claimed many lives of people, particularly in Zambian.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) report says the Zambian government introduced free Antiretrovirals (ARVs) drugs in June 2005, and that emancipated many lives of people. In 2020 some reports were that approximately 37.7 million people across the world were living with HIV, out of these, 36 million were adults and 1.7 million were children aged 0-14 years. More than half (53 per cent) were women and girls.

However, the good fascinating thing today is that a person living with HIV and is on ARV treatment (adhering to all clinical instructions) cannot transmit the virus to the sexual partner who is negative.

This was discovered a few years ago and it is in the line dubbed, U=U, meaning Undetectable = Transmittable. The U=U is a concept which observes that if a person living with HIV is on antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and taking it consistently and correctly, the viral load gets suppressed; as such could be detected on the machine once a sample of the blood is taken. And that could enable the victim to lead healthier life and reduces a chance of passing the virus to a sexual partner.

Senior health promotions officer in the Ministry of Health Mr Wilson Kapenda says over a couple of years many researches have been done and discovered that a person living with HIV who is on ART and adhered to it manages to suppress the virus, hence stands a chance of not transmitting the virus to his/her sexual partner.

‘’Undetectable Equals Untransmittable U=U is a global movement about how effective treatment as prevention can be, if scaled up widely. There is effectively NO risk of sexual transmission of HIV when the partner living with HIV has a durably undetectable viral load,’’ he said. Undetectable viral load is a VL<20copies/ml, therefore in that status an HIV sexual transmission can be zero.

Mr Kapenda said from 2007 to 2018 a number of studies have been conducted on people living with HIV and were on ARV treatment, the results were that they suppressed their viral loads and had zero risk of transmitting virus to their sexual partners.

One study was taken by The HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) from June 2007 to May 2015 in Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Thailand, India, Brazil and the United States of America on 1,763 people who included serodiscordant couples, heterosexual and homosexuals revealed that there was a zero genetically linked sexual transmission of HIV-1 infection among individuals with stably undetectable viral loads (< 200 copies/ml) through the use of ART.

The Ministry of Health has since taken a robust move to ensuring that people living with HIV are put on ARVs to ensure that they reduce their viral loads so that even if they met their negative sexual partner, they could not transmit the virus as that will result in non-new infections of HIV.