VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Ahead of World AIDS Day, a stop HIV/AIDS program is being extended to the rest of the province.
    
The BC Liberals have announced a $20 million boost to the Seek and Treat program, which began as a pilot program in Vancouver and Prince George.
    
Walter Hebert, an HIV/AIDS patient diagnosed in 1988, thought he had received a death sentence after being told he had only six months to live. “It would freak me out to look at the local newspapers every week or every day, seeing everyone that passed away and asking if it was someone you knew,” when Hebert was diagnosed, there was no treatment available and he says he became sicker.

In 2010, when the Seek and Treat program was launched, Hebert started treatment reducing the amount of virus in his blood. Since then, he’s been part of the 90 per cent death decrease in BC since 1996.

The latest round of funding will mean people across the province needing HIV/AIDS treatment won’t have to go to Vancouver or Prince George to get it.