Professor Pietro Vernazza, President of the Swiss Federal Commission on AIDS wasinvited by ASHM to Australia to debate the statement as part of a panel.

The President of the Swiss Federal AIDS Commission, which produced the controversial statement on the effect of treatment of HIV transmission earlier this year, made some qualifications to the statement on a panel of experts at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City.

The announcement by a group of Swiss AIDS experts that people with undetectable viral load are sexually non-infectious needs to be treated with caution, writes Paul Kidd.

p(standfirst). Achieving undetectable viral load is the primary objective of anti-HIV therapy, but for some people it’s an unattainable goal. But now, as PAUL KIDD explains, there’s encouraging news for those who can’t quite get there.

Have you ever felt really run down and fatigued but when you front up for the results of your three-monthly blood test the doctor says; "Everything’s fine! Your viral load is undetectable and your CD4s are great”?

Having regular blood tests is a fact of life for most people with HIV. That three-monthly or six-monthly bloodletting is the single most important part of monitoring the health of your immune system, but what do all those numbers mean?

A viral load test measures the concentration of free virus in the blood. ‘Free’ means the HIV that is not inside cells. The higher the viral load, the more active HIV is considered to be.