Aboriginal AIDS program defunct

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Nearly 130 Aboriginal downtown eastside Vancouver residents, who are HIV-positive or have AIDS must now look outside of their community for specialized health care and social services.

The Vancouver Native Health Society's HIV/AIDS Home Health Care program closed its doors Jan. 13 due to lack of government funding, according to the society's executive director, Lou Demerais.

"Our small grant of $55,000 provided for this fiscal year by the Ministry of Health is gone," said Demerais. "In light of a growing number of Aboriginal people in the area who are being diagnosed with HIV, the provincial government has refused to restore funding to the program. We've had all kinds of church groups and prominent individuals down here writing letters to convince Premier (Mike) Harcourt, who doubles as our MLA in this area, that the program is critical and we have been completely ignored."

Funding for the program was cut back this fiscal year by nearly 70 per cent, eliminating a nursing position and leaving only one social worker to look after client's social needs while facilitating medical services, said Demerais.

"When we first heard of the cut, we were serving about 70 clients - when we went out of business, we had 130. And this is probably a conservative figure in terms of the actual problems that's out there.

Last spring provincial community AIDS organizations, numbering about 46, asked for $7 million for the fiscal year to provide adequate services for people living with HIV/AIDS. The groups received $275 million. In June, B.C. Health Minister Ramsey approved the recommendations for the B.C. AIDS Secretariat on the allocation of an additional $625,000 to community AIDS groups. Four months later an additional $55,00 was granted to provincial needle exchange programs.

"It doesn't make sense for the government to look at AIDS and HIV problems strictly as medical problems," said Demerais. "There are a whole lot of other social issues that people are forced to live with once they're diagnosed with HIV - housing problems, education, social services - to name a few - so why not spread the secretariat membership across some of the other ministries?"

The program looked after a variety of client needs, such as housing, eligibility for income assistance and adequate staples like food.