injection drug use

By Amy Minsky, Leader-Post

 

The number of new HIV cases in Canada is at the same level as when the epidemic was emerging and cutting a swath through the gay community in the early 1980s.

 

But the lifestyles of the patients diagnosed with the virus is not the same, experts say.

 

"The downward trend in Canada started reversing itself in 2001," said Dr. Steffanie Strathdee, associate dean of Global Health Sciences in the department of medicine at the University of California San Diego, who spoke Thursday at the International AIDS conference in Vienna. "The HIV epidemic in Canada is changing, and so must our response."

 

The Canadian Press

 

The number of people testing positive for HIV in Saskatchewan is more than double the national average.

 

A spokeswoman with the province’s Health Ministry says there were 900 HIV-positive cases and 250 instances of full-blown AIDS in Saskatchewan in 2009. Geraldine Arcand says the rising rates of HIV means it’s time for First Nations leaders to step up to the plate and do something about it.

 

Provincial officials say 75 per cent of new cases in the province can be linked to injection drug use.

 

Dr. Moira McKinnon, the province’s chief medical health officer, says they’re modelling their provincial program after a similar one in British Columbia.

 

CBC News

 

Supervised medical treatment with heroin leads to significantly lower use of street heroin by chronic addicts than does injected or oral methadone, according to a study to be published Friday in the medical journal, Lancet.

 

The randomized controlled trial involved heroin addicts who were receiving conventional oral methadone treatment but continued to inject street heroin regularly.

 

The study was conducted over six months by researchers at King's College in London, led by psychiatrist John Strang.

 

Editorial: Times Colonist

 

The need for a fixed needle exchange in Victoria is clear to everyone involved -- the Vancouver Island Health Authority, the city, social agencies. Needle exchanges aren't miracle cures. But they save lives, reduce some of the disorder on the streets and connect intravenous drug users to services.

 

Yet for the last two years, this region has been without a proper needle exchange. And the latest plan from VIHA still fails to provide this needed health service.

 

By Jen Skerritt, Winnipeg Free Press

 

WINNIPEG — Accidental overdoses of oxycodone and fentanyl have killed at least 25 Manitobans in the last two years, raising fears that more people will die awaiting treatment as waiting lists continue to soar.

 

New data from the Chief Medical Examiner's Office reveals the number of accidental prescription opiate overdoses is on the rise. In 2008, 10 people died following accidental overdoses of oxycodone and fentanyl. Preliminary data from 2009 indicates that number rose to at least 15 last year, and some toxicology reports haven't been finalized yet.

 

Oxycodone is a narcotic pain reliever included in such prescription drugs as OxyContin and Percocet.

 

By Rory MacLean, Saskatoon StarPhoenix

 

When Nobel laureate Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and her colleagues set out in the early 1980s to isolate the virus that causes AIDS, the odds were against them.

 

"This was not a good situation, to try to locate a virus from nothing," Barre-Sinoussi told a conference of HIV experts Friday at the 19th Canadian Conference on HIV/AIDS in Saskatoon.

 

Along with her colleague, Luc Montagnier, at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, she succeeded in isolating the virus in 1983.

 

CBC News

 

Despite having Canada's highest rate of HIV-AIDS infection, Saskatchewan health officials say they have no plans to build facilities where intravenous drug users can more safely inject street drugs under the supervision of a health professional.

 

"I don't think that that is the relevant response," said Dr. John Opondo, deputy medical officer of health for the Saskatoon health region.

 

Opondo made his remarks to CBC News at a national HIV-AIDS conference taking place in that city over the weekend.

 

By Doug Cuthand, Special to The StarPhoenix

 

HIV/AIDS is a serious and growing problem in Indian Country. The root causes are complex and there are no quick and easy solutions.

 

AIDS has been called the most serious disease in human history. It has devastated parts of Africa and is working its way around the world.

 

Saskatchewan rates double the national average. According to the provincial Health Ministry, there were 900 cases of HIV and 250 cases of AIDS in 2009. It has also been estimated that about a quarter of HIV cases are undiagnosed, so the number will climb in the future as these are discovered.

 

On top of this, other people continue to get infected.

 

By Hannah Scissons, Saskatoon StarPhoenix

SASKATOON — Half of those at the highest risk of contracting HIV in Saskatoon have already been dealt one of the harshest blows in life: They were sexually assaulted as children.

 

That's one of the findings of a research project that is following 1,000 injection drug users and sex trade workers in the city for two years.

 

The research — an element of the Saskatoon HIV/AIDS Reduction of Harm Program, or SHARP — is aimed at determining why HIV is spreading at an exponential rate in the city. Saskatoon's number of new cases of HIV per year rose to 94 in 2009 from 16 only five years earlier.

 

The Canadian Press , Published: The Globe and Mail

 

The head of the Saskatoon Tribal Council calls the rising rates of HIV in the province a “crisis” facing First Nations and Metis people.

 

The number of people testing positive for HIV in Saskatchewan is more than double the national average.

 

A spokeswoman with the province's Health Ministry says there were 900 HIV-positive cases and 250 instances of full-blown AIDS in Saskatchewan in 2009.

 

Geraldine Arcand says the rising rates of HIV means it's time for First Nations leaders to step up to the plate and do something about it.