2023-05-21 20:15:14
Thierry Martin is director of the AIDS prevention platform, he is well placed to answer the question on the state of the disease in Belgium : “In terms of the number of cases, the situation is moving in the right direction for us since in 2021 we tested around 800 HIV-positive people. For four or five years, therefore, there has been a reduction of around 25%, this is the first time in a very, very long time. Unfortunately, it is still at a high level since 800 cases is 800 cases too many, more than two people are affected per day.“
“Who is affected? What we see is that men who have sex with other men, people of migrant origin, continue to be an extremely affected public in relation to HIV since these two categories represent approximately 75% cases of contamination. But we also see that there is a resurgence, particularly among Belgian heterosexual people, as well as among slightly older people. And so it is also important to adapt our prevention strategies to reach the most vulnerable people. But thanks in particular to the diversification of prevention tools and the arrival of preventive treatment, we can see that we are managing to reduce the epidemic. That being said, there is still a long way to go.“
Today, what has especially evolved is the treatment of this disease. Between the treatments that existed in the 80s and those of today, it’s really day and night : “In fact, when I started working, in the early nineties, with a young man who tested positive for HIV, the only message I might say to him, unfortunately, was a very negative message since at that time, announcing a seropositivity was to announce a death in the medium term“, recalls Thierry Martin.
“Whereas today, since the arrival of triple therapies in 96-97, we have really succeeded in blocking the multiplication of the virus in the body, to such an extent that it becomes undetectable and intransmissible, that is to say say that a person will remain HIV-positive but the amount of virus in their body is so low that they will no longer pass it on to another person. It is a real revolution compared to this disease which is sometimes still too little known..”
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