Dr. Peter Kilmarch (Chief, Epidemiology Branch, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, CDC) gave a presentation today on one of CHAMP's amazing StrategyLab conference calls. I didn't make the call, but I did check out the Powerpoint slides the Kilmarch sent out to support his talk, "Assessing the Effect of Antiretroviral Therapy on Risk of Sexual Transmission of HIV." Very useful and interesting compilation of data here. I'm not sure if the slides are public, so I won't republish them here, but I did want to highlight this slide on the hypothetical potential for ARV + Universal testing to dramatically impact the epidemic in South Africa:

Granted, this is highly hypothetical scenario (based on this modelling study) -- requiring a number of assumed phenomenon to be implemented without problem. But the entire set of slides highlights the potential for a combination of testing and treatment to be used as a powerful set of prevention techniques. I've said it once, I'll say it again: these are tried and true tools in our prevention knapsack -- and they seem to rely much less on the needs of behavioral change messages that I believe are often stigmatizing and highly problematic. Though certainly testing / treatment program implementations can come with their own set of problems (treatment adherence, questions over when to begin ARV treatment, etc.)

What we need to make this feasible is certainly generic equivalents -- ASAP. And certainly a rethinking of the "old school" approaches to prevention.