NIH Big Wig Confirms HIV Undetectable equals Uninfectious (Video)

Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, Director of the Division of AIDS of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the NIH, confirms the understanding of science slowly infecting the stigma of HIV with truth.

= Undetectable equals Uninfectious. It’s a statement that you may or may not have already heard before. But it is the truth, based on science, about the result of someone living with HIV and being adherent to medication– thus reducing the viral amount in their body and for all practical purposes also eliminating their risk of transmitting the virus to anyone, ever.

During a recent Facebook LIVE segment with AIDS.gov at the 2016 Ryan White Conference, Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, the head of HIV/AIDS division of NIAID within the NIH, was discussing the benefits of someone living with HIV taking their medication and being adherent in order to reach an undetectable viral load.

“The most important part of this is once you begin therapy you stay on therapy. With full virologic suppression, the virus is not growing in your body. You not only have protection from your own HIV,” Dieffenbach says, “you also are not able, then, or not capable of transmitting HIV to a partner, a sexual partner.”

And, “full virologic suppression” means having an undetectable viral load.

Watch: #HIVscoop Dr. Carl Dieffenbach confirms why undetectable is uninfectious! #UmeansU #nice pic.twitter.com/kHh1VBojzQ

— Josh Robbins (@imstillJosh) September 15, 2016

Major h/t to Prevention Access Campaign that nudged this up in the social media timelines.