Undetectable equals Untransmittable
At this point of our conversation I became curious to know what protection methods they were using to prevent infecting the other with their strain of the HIV virus. They both replied almost in unison that they had unprotected sex as both had undetectable viral loads and so they were untransmittable. Both get their viral load tested once every four months.
Wow! Here was a living example of U=U (UequalsU) or undetectable equals untransmittable. And just the previous day I had spoken to Bruce Richards, founder of the Prevention Access Campaign, who is credited with launching the profoundly game-changing U=U campaign in July 2016 to share the groundbreaking scientific evidence that people living with HIV (PLHIV) who are on ART and have reduced their viral loads to an undetectable level cannot transmit the virus sexually to another.
Stigma around HIV
While Roberto is very open about his positive status with his friends and even with strangers (like me), his family does not know that he is HIV-positive. "They live in a very small town and it might hurt their feelings. I do not want them to feel stigmatised or bad in front of others because of my sickness. In Mexico, it is very normal to be HIV-positive. People do not care. I do not care what others will think of me. But I do not want to share it with my family out of respect for their sentiments. But my family knows about my relationship with Rolle and they are okay with it. His family is from Argentina and my family is from Sinaloa; they do not live here but they all know about our relationship."
However, Rolle's family knows that he is HIV-positive. "When I got the virus, I said to myself: I need three persons--my mother and my two sisters--to know about my status. The rest of the world I do not care about, as it does not matter. It was very hard for them to accept it. But after a while they were okay and gave me all the support."
Roberto's philosophy of life: "It does not matter how sick you are in the body, or how much treatment you are taking, as long as you are healthy in your mind. That is the most important thing. You have to love your brain and let the love go inside your brain to be healthy. Also I strongly believe that some good comes out of bad things too. Like now I have the most wonderful guy as my partner. May be if I were not HIV-positive I could not have had that. This guy is amazing, I loved him since the first moment I met him. And now we have a relationship that is getting better and better with each passing day."
Rolle's advice to all PLHIV is to follow their doctor's advice and to get their health parameters checked periodically, as HIV medication can, at times, affect the bones and other organs of the body. He also wants to send the message across for people to know that if their viral load is undetectable, they cannot infect others with the HIV virus sexually. But until their viral load falls to undetectable levels, they must have protected and safe sex to prevent their partner from getting infected. So periodic viral-load testing is a must for all PLHIV on ART.
"It was a mere coincidence that we both had undetectable viral loads. But for those who are not so, they should follow their doctor's advice as to which protection method they must use for safe sex."
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