--- title: HIV Treatment Works, Says CDC description: Encouraging people to seek treatment is key canonical: https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-17T16:43:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:00:39.633Z article:section: Health og:title: HIV Treatment Works, Says CDC og:description: Encouraging people to seek treatment is key og:url: https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0110050f957a0bb/6986a3d63bc99961fb1a558c/hiv_poster_cedric_cdc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3475 og:image:height: 1955 og:image:alt: hiv_poster_cedric_cdc og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: HIV Treatment Works, Says CDC twitter:description: Encouraging people to seek treatment is key twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0110050f957a0bb/6986a3d63bc99961fb1a558c/hiv_poster_cedric_cdc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # HIV Treatment Works, Says CDC > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=f65550d3-a472-409e-b6f6-8556084ed545&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 17, 2014 4:43 PM UTC  CDC  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Sep 17, 2014 4:43 PM UTC With the input of more than 100 people living with HIV, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched a new ad campaign today called “[HIV Treatment Works](http://www.cdc.gov/actagainstaids/campaigns/hivtreatmentworks/index.html).” The message: If you’re HIV positive, get treatment early and stick with it. Many people don’t immediately start or stay on medication for a variety of reasons, including the cost of the drugs, poor access to health care, a lack of knowledge about effective treatments, and stigma about the disease, says Dr. Nick DeLuca, Chief of the Prevention Communication Branch in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at CDC. Of the 1.1 million Americans living with HIV, only 1 in 4 have an undetectable viral load, the CDC says, which means that the viral levels in their blood are suppressed and are unlikely to be transmitted to other people. At least some of that rate, the CDC says, is due to a lack of adherence to medication. Though antiretroviral therapy requires daily medication and frequent doctor visits and blood draws, it’s highly effective. “We know that if we get individuals living with HIV on treatment early, it’s the best thing to improve their individual health,” DeLuca says. People who start and continue treatment are 96% less likely to transmit it to others, and they’re less likely to get sick themselves because of improved immune function. About 50,000 Americans per year contract HIV, a rate that’s remained steady since the mid-1990s. Of the new infections, 44% are African-Americans; black males are especially at risk. About a quarter of all new infections happened in people between ages 13-24. ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/"},"headline":"HIV Treatment Works, Says CDC","datePublished":"2014-09-17T16:43:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:00:39.633Z","description":"Encouraging people to seek treatment is key","url":"https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/","keywords":["Infectious Disease","CDC","HIV"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0110050f957a0bb/6986a3d63bc99961fb1a558c/hiv_poster_cedric_cdc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb0110050f957a0bb/6986a3d63bc99961fb1a558c/hiv_poster_cedric_cdc.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"hiv_poster_cedric_cdc","caption":"","creditText":"CDC","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/infectious-disease/","name":"Infectious Disease"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/","name":"HIV Treatment Works, Says CDC"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3393657/hiv-treatment-works-cdc/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```