Some relevant excerpts:

Dr. Julio Montaner has spent decades in the fight against HIV but says he feels years of progress slipping away.

“I am very worried about what’s coming our way,” said Montaner, executive director and physician-in-chief at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, the largest HIV/AIDS research and treatment facility in Canada.

He says new cases of the virus are popping up in British Columbia every week — a reality reflected in health data from across the country, sparking calls from advocates and health experts for Canada to address the growing issue.

New modelling data from the Public Health Agency of Canada shows there was a 22.8 per cent increase in new HIV infections between 2022 and 2024.

In 2024, an estimated 2,517 new infections occurred compared with the 2,050 infections recorded two years earlier.

This week, global health leaders at the International AIDS conference in Rio de Janeiro warned that major foreign aid cuts, mostly from the United States and other high-income countries — including Canada — could unravel years of progress.

UNAIDS says, in 2025, international funding for HIV testing and treatment initiatives in low- and middle-income nations plummeted by 18 per cent.

Jody Jollimore, an executive director for the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE) agrees that more can be done.

Jollimore says despite Canada’s commitment in 2016 to eliminate HIV, investment in the HIV and Hepatitis C Community Action Fund that supports programs, like CATIE, has mostly been stagnant.

Public Health Agency of Canada says funding through the HIV and Hepatitis C Community Action Fund and the Harm Reduction Fund amounts to $33.4 million annually and is “tailored to reach key populations and the regions of the country most affected by HIV, hepatitis C” and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.

“A dollar does not go as far as it used to,” Jollimore said.

Jollimore says the face of HIV is changing in Canada. He says when the AIDS crisis began in the 1980s it was centered in big cities, mostly affecting gay men, but today, it is showing up in rural and remote communities without adequate health infrastructure and resources. He says more investment is needed to reach those people.

“It tends to thrive in pockets where there’s the least connection to care,” Jollimore said. “In those communities where stigma or discrimination or racism may prevent someone from coming forth to get tested or treated.”