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.
09 Nov 2011
Inhalation of widely available volatile substances for their unintended psychoactive effects is gaining prominence and is clearly a concern for public health practitioners and policy makers. This paper is the second of a two-part mini-series that explores the association between solvent use and the increased susceptibility to HIV and other sexually transmitted and bloodborne infections (HIV/STBBIs).
The last paper presented some epidemiological data on the prevalence of solvents use in Canada and the U.S., and evidence of an association between solvent use and HIV/STBBIs. This current paper discusses potential biological mechanisms that may be contributing to the observed phenomena of
increased susceptibility to and progression of HIV and HCV in solvent users.
Download PDF
07 Nov 2011
Monday November 7, 2011
In September, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that Insite - the supervised safe injection program in Vancouver - should be allowed to continue operating. Health and social workers say the program helps reduce the spread of disease among intravenous drug users by providing them with clean needles, and a safe place to inject. And now, many are pushing for the creation of more safe injection sites. Toronto is already experimenting with a program called COUNTERfit.
03 Nov 2011
Naloxone can help reduce the numbers of drug overdoses in Thunder Bay, health care experts say
Every year, hundreds of people overdose on drugs in Thunder Bay. The city's drug strategy committee wants to explore handing out Naloxone, a medication that can reverse a potentially fatal overdose.
Superior North Emergency Medical Service has officially recorded more than 230 known drug overdose cases since January.
But Andrew Dillon, an advanced care paramedic, said the real number is likely over 1,200. He regularly sees people who have overdosed on Percocet, Oxycontin or Fentanyl.
Paramedics use Naloxone to save patients lives after severe opiate overdoses.
25 Oct 2011
Police say addicts are shifting from illicit drugs to prescription narcotics
CBC News, Posted: Oct 24, 2011
Greater Sudbury police and community outreach workers say prescription narcotics have become the drug of choice in the city.
They say a growing number of people are getting hooked on pain pills like Oyxcontin.
“I think we are at a crisis,” said Vicki Kett, who works with Reseau Access Network, an HIV and Hepatitis agency . “But it's so easy to say it's not happening to me.”
According to Kett, there are a growing number of people in Sudbury who are snorting, smoking and injecting prescription pills.
“They've had a big hold on me,” said Oyxcontin addict Felicity.
CBC has agreed to use only her first name.
“I started prostituting myself, everyday, all day long,” the 31-year-old mother of two said.
06 Oct 2011
Ian Holroyd, NORTH OAKVILLE TODAY
Crack kits were a source of debate in Hamilton last week, but in Halton, the Region has been distributing the safe inhalation packages for nearly two years.
Last Wednesday (Sept. 28), Hamilton’s City Council voted down a recommendation to provide clean crack kits (which include new crack pipes) to its health workers for distribution among crack cocaine users.
For the past 10 years, Halton Region has operated a needle exchange program and since the end of 2009, it has made crack kits available to the public.
Initiatives like the crack kits are known as harm reduction techniques and are intended to help reduce the transmission of blood borne diseases by encouraging users not to share crack pipes.
OHSUTP
