A “punctual” in ‘La Revuelta’ on HIV: “The danger is greater and you don’t know what you have” | Health and wellness

With the emblematic – and shrill – noise of the coaches and a luminous cartel at the bottom of the screen, the program The Revuelta He announced a “one-off” evening: he had to make an important nuance regarding certain statements by actor Eduardo Casanova on the transmission of HIV. A week ago, the director, guest on David Broncano’s show, rightly recalled that HIV-positive people who are undergoing treatment have the undetectable AIDS virus in their body and therefore cannot transmit it. But, one after another, I received an incorrect comment: “Anyone with HIV in Spain is undetectable.” This statement, that I am reproducing the program on its social networks, is incorrect because there are HIV-positive people in Spain who do not know that they are infected and, therefore, do not follow treatment; so you can only transmit the virus.

Casanova’s confusion, which the program reproduced on To resolve the controversy, Broncano told Jara Llenas-García, vice president of Seisida and infectious disease specialist at Madrid’s La Paz University Hospital: “Undetectable equals untransmittable.” analysis, we do not detect it. And when a person is undetectable, they are not transmitting the virus.

Casanova’s intention was good and the initial message was correct: “Undetectable equals untransmittable.” That is, HIV-positive people take medication, which is 96% of people, they are undetectable and, therefore, untransmittable,” I said. The problem is that, at another point in the conversation with Broncano, while trying to reinforce the message, he found an erroneous statement that the program’s networks ended up amplifying and incorporating into one of his messages, which creates a silence and a very dangerous stigma that generates fear and rejection.

Jara Llenas-García participated in his intervention, thanking Casanova who had taken up the theme “because there are not many” and explained that, although the actor said “I said a lot of things that were very good”, it was necessary to make some specific comments. The infectologist explained the meaning of “undetectable = untransmittable” and recalled the scientific approval behind this statement: “While there are many studies with many couples in which one member of the couple is HIV positive, takes medication and is undetectable, the other person does not have HIV and decides not to use a condom. The risk of transmission was high, both in heterosexual and homosexual people, both during sexual relations oral, vaginal and anal.

The doctor also assured that this scientific evidence was something “liberating” for HIV-positive people who are undergoing treatment. “Because we can have sex without fear of transmitting the virus, we can have children, we can have a completely normal life,” he explained.

Today, Llenas-García approved his intervention to warn that not all HIV-positive people in Spain are undetectable, because there are still many people who do not know that they are infected. “In Spain, last year there were 3,340 new cases of HIV. These cases mainly come from people who are not diagnosed: because they are not diagnosed, they do not follow treatment and, therefore, they are not undetectable and transmit the infection. It is on this group that we want to focus,” he insisted.

The infectious disease specialist recalls that when a person does not know that they are infected, the virus damages their defenses and exposes them to the risk of falling ill and developing AIDS, which is the most advanced phase of HIV infection. It is therefore necessary to detect the virus as early as possible and to “normalize” checks to identify infection early: “We must take care of HIV prevention for all sexually active people. According to data from the Ministry of Health, 51.1% of people diagnosed infected in 2024 had a late diagnosis.

Raising awareness on this issue is very important in terms of public health, he said: “If we could get everyone diagnosed, on treatment and undetectable, we would end the epidemic.”

The virus continues to circulate, it is not possible to break the guard, warns the entire scientific community. And, as Eduardo Casanova and his companion María León rightly recalled in The Revueltato be vigilant and carry out HIV detection tests for everyone (sexually active), homosexuals and heterosexuals. Indeed, much more than the majority of new reported HIV infections occurred among men who have sex with men, the majority of AIDS diagnoses in 2024 and beyond 2025 were among heterosexual people. According to the experts consulted, this is due to late diagnosis due to the lack of controls in this group.