Julio Montaner
UBC Professor and Head of the Division of AIDS Julio Montaner will receive the 2017 Killam Prize in the Health Sciences from the Canada Council for the Arts.
The Killam Prize honors eminent Canadian scholars and scientists actively engaged in research, whether in industry, government agencies or universities, whose lifetime of work has impacted the lives of Canadians and citizens around the world. Dr. Montaner and his fellow awardees will receive a $100,000 prize and be honoured at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on May 30th.
The Canada Council for the Arts honoured Dr. Montaner for “saving millions of lives worldwide with his bold work on Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) and championing the ‘Treatment as Prevention’ strategy.'” The council also hailed his support for harm reduction, including safe injection sites and needle exchange programs, and his work with the World Health Organization on prevention strategies for viral hepatitis.
Winners and recipients are chosen by a selection committee of their peers. The Killam Prize was first awarded in 1981.
In September, Dr. Montaner was named a University Killam Professor, the highest honour that UBC confers on faculty members.
Dr. Montaner, who also is the Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, established the global standard of care for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention and he continues to provide leadership in the international HIV/AIDS research community. He has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to improving the care and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS, helping establish the efficacy of HAART and pioneering “Treatment as Prevention” to decrease morbidity, mortality and HIV transmission.
Largely through his efforts, Treatment as Prevention (TasP) has now been implemented with great success in B.C., and progressively embraced by UNAIDS, China, the U.S. and France, among others. In 2013 TasP was fully incorporated in the World Health Organization guidelines.