03 Feb 2012
CATIE NEWS (Sean R. Hosein)
In high-income countries such as Canada, the United States and in Western Europe, great strides have been made in reducing mother-to-child transmission (also called vertical transmission) of HIV. This has come about because the following steps have been instituted:
• offering HIV testing to pregnant women
• offering prenatal care for HIV-positive pregnant women
• the use of potent combination HIV therapy (commonly called ART or HAART) during pregnancy
• intravenous AZT (zidovudine, Retrovir) for the mother during delivery
• six weeks of oral anti-HIV therapy for the infant after birth
• use of formula rather than breast milk for feeding (breast milk can contain HIV)
• HIV-positive parents not pre-chewing food for infants (this can sometimes transmit HIV)
By implementing all of these steps, HIV-positive mothers can give birth to a healthy HIV-negative infant and maintain their child’s health as it develops.
As part of the Canadian Perinatal HIV Surveillance Program (CPHSP), researchers have been studying vertical transmission and ways to minimize it for the past 20 years. In their latest report they document profound reductions in vertical transmission that have occurred in Canada during the study. Their report, published in the journal AIDS, points to future directions for research and support so that the rate of vertical transmission can be further reduced.
03 Feb 2012
New committee to delve deeper into needle concerns
ANGELA MULLINS, METRO LONDON, February 01, 2012
The city is forming a working group to examine the issue of used syringes being discarded on public and private property.
The committee plans to take on pretty much anything that could fall under the “discarded sharps” umbrella, said Jan Richardson, who manages homelessness, hostels and special populations for the city.
“There are many individuals affected … property owners, merchants, landlords, community agencies, parks staff,” Richardson said. “We’re ready now to say, ‘Let’s make the table bigger so that we can start looking at some of the broader solutions.’”
That readiness comes after the city rolled out needle-disposal boxes in 2008 as part of London CAReS (community addiction response strategy) — a plan to improve the health of homeless people by addressing addictions. A few boxes were put in place during the first year, and staff have been adding more since then.
19 Jan 2012
By VALERIE MACDONALD Northumberland Today
Posted 6 hours ago
NT Health Jan19
Medicinal marijuana rules under review. MP
VALERIE MACDONALD
WARKWORTH — Adrienne Baker-Hicks has been using medical marijuana since 2009 to manage pain due to 30 serious medical conditions - but each year renewal through Health Canada is more difficult and she fears the Harper Government is attempting to get rid of the program.
"I live with pain constantly, every day," Adrienne Baker-Hicks said during an interview at her isolated, rural Warkworth-area home outlining the medical conditions that have wracked her body. She suffers with seizures and other problems including degenerative disc disease - with bone spurs sticking into her spinal cord, a rare blood disorder (Antiphospholipid-Syndrom) and Lupis. One such painful disease has eaten the cartilage out of her right ear and started on her left before she was properly diagnosed.
Smoking marijuana doesn't alleviate the pain, Baker-Hicks said, it just makes it bearable, and is far more beneficial for her than the escalating level of pharmaceutical drugs she took for years before including narcotics like oxycontin and a Fentanyl transdermal patch which she describes as stronger that morphine. Marijuana lets her sleep, eat and live better, although she spends most of her time at home.
04 Jan 2012
By Elizabeth Payne, Postmedia News December 30, 2011
OTTAWA — While the world was distracted by Attawapiskat, another desperate cry for help was getting little notice in remote northern Ontario, where addiction to the prescription drug OxyContin is devastating reserves.
Although the federal government is well aware of the spiralling drug crisis in the North — it provides health care on reserves — First Nations officials from northwestern Ontario say they can't understand why, at a time when the government is being accused of ignoring the plight of people on reserves like Attawapiskat, it is not only providing inadequate resources to cope with the drug problem, but is throwing roadblocks in the way of treatment that could be a low-cost, effective solution.
16 Dec 2011
By Dustin Walker, Daily News December 15, 2011
Katherine knew something was wrong when a red line began to creep up the side of her leg. She had stepped on a thumbtack a few days earlier and the tiny cut looked swollen and inflamed. But Katherine put off going to the medical clinic.
The Nanoose First Nations elder didn't want to deal with the doctors and nurses again. She didn't want to be judged.
Katherine said a doctor had once wrongfully accused her of showing up to an appointment drunk. She stormed out of the office, angry and embarrassed.
"I never went back to the doctor or to the clinic because I was always afraid of being shamed by them," said the 64-year-old with diabetes, who asked that her real name not be revealed.
For more than a decade, Katherine had avoided the health-care system. And she wasn't about to let a seemingly minor puncture wound on her foot change that.
29 Nov 2011
The Canadian Press, Posted: Nov 28, 2011
Toronto has more HIV and AIDS cases than ever before, with an estimated one in 120 adults in the city now HIV-positive, a new report suggested Monday.
In all of Ontario, the number of people living with HIV-AIDS grew by 31 per cent between 2003 and 2008 and that number continues to expand, said the report released by Casey House to mark World AIDS Week.
The face of HIV and AIDS is changing dramatically, which could bring many challenges for the province's health care system, said the report "Facing the Future Together."
While gay men continue to make up the largest group of people living with the infection, new cases of women, aboriginal people and newcomers to Canada are also being diagnosed, the report said.
There is also a phenomenon known as the 'Greying of AIDS' which refers to the aging population and the impact it will have on health care. Half of the HIV-positive population in Ontario is expected to be older than 50 by 2015, the report said.
25 Nov 2011
First came an assault on Vancouver, British Columbia’s safe injection site. That was followed by the axing of safe tattooing programs in prisons (www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.070017), as well as opposition to needle exchange and safe sex programs. Meanwhile, federal funding for drug substitution programs has quietly dried up.
Now, a suite of new drug laws working their way through Parliament has everyone forecasting that judges will have little option but to throw a whole lot of drug users into the hoosegow, where rates of HIV and Hepatitis C infection are exponentially greater than among the general population (www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/rsrch/reports/r211/r211-eng.shtml).
The pattern is self-evident, public health advocates say. To wit: harm reduction programs are anathema to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s governing Conservative party.
16 Nov 2011
By Amie Ferris-Rotman, ATHENS | Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:49am EST
(Reuters) - 'Contagion' is the label financial markets use for the economic spread of the Greek crisis. For hundreds of people in an increasingly chaotic society, the word has a deadlier meaning.
Take the mother of four introduced to Reuters by her social worker at the bright offices of an Athens non-governmental organization called Kentro Zois, or The Center for Life. A Ukrainian, she said she immigrated to Greece 12 years ago and married a Greek man.
Bleached blonde hair tightly pulled back in a bun, the 34-year old spoke on condition of anonymity. When her two-year-old daughter was wheezy last October, she brought the child to a state-run hospital. The doctors could not explain the baby's persistent fever. One suggested an HIV test. The diagnosis for both mother and child was positive. "I was devastated," she said.
10 Nov 2011
Vit Wagner Staff Reporter, Toronto Star
Ontario’s Safe Streets Act is contributing significantly to the “criminalization of homelessness” and should be repealed, recommends a report by York University and the University of Guelph.
The study, based on information gained through the Freedom of Information Act, found that the number of tickets issued to homeless people in Toronto for panhandling and related activities increased by more than 2000 per cent between 2000 and 2010.
This was despite a decline from 29 per cent to 3 per cent in the number of street youth who cited panhandling and squeegeeing as their main source of income over a similar period.
In total, more than $4 million in tickets were issued, at an estimated cost of $1 million in police hours.
“We’re talking about a population that has no money — that’s why they are panhandling. And yet we issue them fines that they cannot pay,” said York University professor Stephen Gaetz, who co-authored the study with University of Guelph colleague Bill O’Grady.
09 Nov 2011
Kevork M. Peltekian, MD
Dalhousie University, Departments of Medicine and Surgery and Hepatology Services
Geri Hirsch, RN-NP MSN,
Carla Burgess, RN-NP MN
Miller and colleagues and the Cedar Project Partnership should be congratulated for helping us understand the “how” and the “why” of the high initiation rate for injection drug use among a vulnerable population.1 But what are we doing about it?
Every year about 5000 Canadians, mostly youth, become infected with hepatitis C virus — often during the first year following initiation of injection drug use.2 Rates of hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and HIV infection are much higher among street youth than among their nonstreet peers.3 In Canada, prevalence of hepatitis C virus among injection drug users is between 46% and 60%4 — in other words, at least one in two is infected.
OHSUTP
