Year of the Queer: Coun. Tim Stevenson was political catalyst for B.C.'s globally admired life-saving HIV treatment

published on May 16, 2018 by Charlie Smith, in The Georgia Straight

It's a story that's not well known to many residents of the city

Vancouver city councillor Tim Stevenson will be in the spotlight on Wednesday (May 23) when the City of Vancouver raises flags at Vancouver City Hall to designate this as the Year of the Queer.

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At the 25th-anniversary dinner for Positive Living B.C. in 2011, famed HIV doctor and researcher Julio Montaner gave credit to the city and the province for their ongoing support.

“Without them stepping in and saying, ‘Yes, we’re going to commit to this fight,’ there would have been no St. Paul’s [B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS],” Montaner said. “There would have been no AIDS program. We would have been just like VGH or the UBC hospital at the time. ‘You are on your own and God save you.’ Thanks to them, we stepped up to the plate.”

B.C. was the first province in Canada that virtually eliminated the transmission of HIV from mothers to their children. B.C. drove down HIV-transmission rates through the B.C. centre’s innovative treatment-as-prevention approach, which was later adopted by the governments of China, France, the United States, and Brazil.

Countless lives have been saved as a result.

The program that the Glen Clark government initially funded continued to receive strong support from B.C. Liberal health ministers, including Colin Hansen, George Abbott, Kevin Falcon, and Terry Lake.

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Treatment as Prevention®

Julio Montaner

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Year of the Queer: Coun. Tim Stevenson was political catalyst for B.C.'s globally admired life-saving HIV treatment

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