HIV-blocking drug to be offered free
B.C. could soon cover treatment for 2,000 at high risk of infection
Starting Jan. 1, the province will offer a powerful HIV prevention treatment for free through the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS to highrisk individuals who ask for it, Health Minister Adrian Dix said Thursday.
The prevention method involves a pill that combines two of the three anti-retroviral drugs used to treat HIV-infected patients, which is given to uninfected patients as a means to block transmission of the virus. B.C. could see about 2,000 patients access the drug initially, according to Dr. Julio Montaner, the centre’s director. Montaner said they have the capacity to expand to 5,000 patients fully covered under Pharmacare.
“We’re not talking about everybody, but (treating) a few thousand people at the highest risk for HIV (infection),” Montaner told Postmedia News. “Then we will see, very promptly, a significant reduction in new HIV infections.”
While deaths related to HIVAIDS have declined by 90 per cent since 1996, the province still records some 5.1 new infections per 100,000 people — more than 230 in B.C.’s population of 4.6 million.
The Health Ministry declined to discuss the program’s costs, but Montaner said the province can afford it because his centre was able to cut a deal with manufacturers of generic versions of Gilead Sciences Inc.’s drug Truvada.
“We had an open tender and were able to secure (a generic version) at a discount of greater than 75 per cent,” Montaner said, “for both treatment and prevention.”
Reduced costs for drugs to treat HIV-infected patients created space within the centre’s existing budget to offer it as a prevention to non-infected patients.
Dix said the government approved covering the treatment, which was recommended by Health Canada’s common drug review, provided that generic offerings could reduce the price.
“This is recommended as part of the treatment as prevention strategy, which has obviously been driven by (Montaner) and his team for many years,” Dix said.
“(The drug) has been successful in other jurisdictions, and we feel it’s the right way to go.”
Montaner said it was his centre’s own research into the use of anti-retroviral drugs to fight HIV infections that led to the hypothesis that if anti-retroviral drugs could stop HIV from replicating in an infected patient, they could also be used to block the transmission of the virus.
“That was a leap of faith at the time,” Montaner said, but further research proved that the approach would work.
“By 2016, under the World Health Organization, they embraced our approach of treatment as prevention,” Montaner added.
The treatment will be available through a Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS’s program to people defined as being at high risk of infection, including men and transgender women who have sex with men, people who inject drugs and those in relationships with people living with HIV.
Anyone interested in the prevention method should talk to their health-care provider.
Montaner said there are between 700 and 900 British Columbians already getting Truvada informally whom he believes will quickly switch. He said there are another 1,000 “waiting in the wings” who can’t afford to buy the drug on their own.
Montaner has also proposed treatment as prevention to combat infectious diseases such as hepatitis. Dix wouldn’t indicate whether extending Pharmacare coverage for other conditions was in the offing, but did say he was “very interested.”