A visionary-physician and a constant advocate for effective HIV-AIDS treatment
Having learned the power of combination drug treatment for tuberculosis from his father, Dr. Luis Julio Gonzalez Montaner, he began exploring combination antiretroviral therapy regimens for his patients in 1990, eventually leading an international consortium of investigators to test a novel triple drug combination called ‘highly active antiretroviral therapy’ (HAART) to suppress the progression of HIV disease. With his team, he established the impact of HAART on decreasing HIV transmission in BC, and pioneered the notion of Treatment as Prevention. The success of this strategy led Dr. Montaner to advocate the 90-90-90 Target, which calls for 90% of HIV cases to be diagnosed, 90% of them to have access to HAART, and 90% of them to be virologically suppressed globally.