We, people living with HIV,
are moving #pastigma.
It’s time.
A grassroots HIV awareness campaign created & run entirely
by people living with undetectable HIV.
I live with undetectable HIV
equals Untransmitable (U=U)
since 2003.
I am on efffective ARV treatment since 2002 (without interruption). Based on current medical evidence of U=U message, I cannot pass on HIV through sexual contact since 2003.
The message of undetectable HIV was first defined in 2008 in the Swiss Statement and later confirmed in studies including HPTN 052 (2011) and PARTNER 1 and 2 (2014, 2018).
Tom Siara, HIv+ N=N
HIV Advocate, communications designer,
Mr Bear of Honor Europe
“We need to focus on the following message:
If you live with HIV and take effective antiretroviral therapy, and your viral load is below 50 copies per ml, you are sexually non-infectious.
Time for excuses is over.”
Alison J. Rodger, PhD
Professor of Infectious Diseases
Honorary Consultant in Infectious Diseases and HIV
University College London
“It is now known that the risk of HIV transmission from a person with an undetectable viral load is ZERO.
As a scientist, saying this carries weight because we cannot prove a negative, but we have complete confidence that the risk is truly zero.”
“U=U, undetectable HIV is untransmittable. The statistical risk of transmission from a person with an undetectable viral load is so low that infection could occur once every 419 years of continuous sexual contact.”
Alison J. Rodger, PhD
The U=U message combines the best biomedical evidence with current concepts from behavioral and social science.
Eisinger i coauthors (2019)
I live with Undetectable HIV
equals Untransmitable (U=U)
since 2008. I gave birth to two
healthy HIV-negative children.
Choć kryteria N=N nie odnoszą się wprost do transmisji wertykalnej HIV, dane pokazują, że jeśli diagnoza, rozpoczęcie terapii
ARV i supresja (<50 kopii/ml) nastąpią przed ciążą i utrzymają
się w ciąży i podczas karmienia piersią, ryzyko transmisji jest
skrajnie niskie.
Magdalena Glewicz, HIv+ N=N
HIV Advocate, Councilor of the Gdańsk Wrzeszcz Dolny district
“The U=U message of undetectable HIV eliminates HIV-related stigma.
It encourages people living with HIV to start ARV therapy and to stay on it to maintain an undetectable viral load.”
Bruce Richman, HIV+
Founder of the U=U movement. Executive director and co-founder of the Prevention Access Campaign”
Treatment as prevention, or TasP, is one of the most effective biomedical tools for preventing the further spread of HIV.
Despite its effectiveness, information about TasP reached people living with HIV, and the wider global community, slowly.
In 2016, the Prevention Access Campaign launched the U=U movement, Undetectable = Untransmittable, known in Polish as N=N Niewykrywalny = Niezakażający, to establish scientific consensus and fill this gap in health communication.
The community-led U=U campaign has since become a global health and human rights movement with more than 1000 official partners in 105 countries.
Despite growing evidence of its broad benefits, U=U has not yet reached its full potential as an HIV intervention.
Some of the reasons include:
Reluctance in some settings to share U=U information because of stigma or moralizing attitudes.
Limited awareness and education on U=U among health workers, key populations, and the general public.
Insufficient resources, especially funding and technical capacity, needed to implement, expand, monitor, and evaluate U=U.
Limited understanding of how to apply U=U as an intervention and how it helps.