Sask. celebrates successes on World AIDS Day

In that same time period there has been a slight increase in heterosexual transmission.

“So fundamentally anyone who has sex in the province needs to consider themselves at risk of HIV and should be tested,” she said.

In other parts of the country, men who have sex with men (MSM) are at the greatest risk of transmitting HIV. In Saskatchewan those numbers are currently stable, but Werker said lessons from Vancouver show there can be a sudden upswing.

“Anecdotally I have heard that in this province MSM may not be routinely tested,” she said.

The ministry of health doesn’t have data on risk behaviours of MSM but, “we do know that there have been outbreaks in this population of syphilis, which indicates there is a certain sub-population of MSM who are not using appropriate [safety] measures.”

Dr. Johnmark Opondo has been around since the beginning of the HIV strategy in 2009. He was the medical health officer for the provincial HIV leadership team.

“We’ve made a lot of progress and sometimes the danger is we do forget where we come from,” he said.

What sparked the strategy was a situation in 2009, where health officials were investigating a significant HIV cluster among intravenous drug users.

“The rate of new HIV diagnosis that we were seeing was actually quite frightening to witness.”

People who were being diagnosed were late in their illness and by the time they made it to hospital they were in bad shape, Opondo said. Now there are fewer ICU admissions with late stage HIV/AIDS.

“Unfortunately we are still making AIDS diagnosis within our HIV community,” he said.

On the flip side, the majority of people with diagnosed HIV are engaging with the health system, linking into care and have a fully supressed virus.

“We’ve made great strides and we’ve shown in Saskatchewan with all the challenges of distance, rural and remote, despite all that we can actually make improvements. Have we finished the work? No, I think we can do more,” Opondo said.

“We’re not necessarily just going to treat ourselves out of a HIV outbreak because treatment and medication is one thing, but getting to the root causes of the issues, that put people at risk … it’s poverty, it’s alienation, it’s discrimination, not feeling like you are part of the community.”

“With the HIV strategy we’ve probably enough time to stabilize the situation particularly for health care, but I really think now is the time is where we need to refocus, and retool and address the social determinants.”

A full study from the four-year HIV strategy is expected to be released in 2015, and some of the funding has already been annualized into regional budgets, said Werker.

Also, a new team of health workers have been formed with a goal working on the issues of communicable diseases such as HIV, Tuberculosis, Hepatitis C, and Sexually Transmitted Infections. Opondo will be the medical health officer on this new transition team. This group is set to meet for the first time this week.

As the province moves forward, they will continue to work in collaboration with health officials from other jurisdictions, including British Columbia and Manitoba.

ahill@rawlco.com

On Twitter: @Angelaislost

by Angela Hill

Sask. celebrates successes on World AIDS Day

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