AIDS driven by addiction in Aboriginal communities

Margaret Poitras doesn’t expect the statistics to be released Dec. 1 to be any different than what is already known: too many Aboriginal people are presenting with AIDS before they are even diagnosed with HIV.

“Our people are dying on the streets. They’re walking around palliative,” said Poitras, executive director with All Nations Hope AIDS Network, the only Aboriginal-focused HIV/AIDS organization in Saskatchewan.

In the Aboriginal population, AIDS is driven by addiction and intravenous drug use and addicts rarely choose to get help at early stages, Poitras explained. HIV or AIDS is usually diagnosed because of a clinic or hospital visit for a different reason. Then when diagnosed, few AIDS patients choose to get help. For some, that decision is made because of the way they are treated at the medical facility.

But the health system is not the only place where difficulties lie. Another system that isn’t meeting the needs of Aboriginal people is the justice system, said Poitras, who points out that Aboriginal people are over-represented in the prisons.

“The correctional institutions don’t treat people who are living with an addiction fairly. They put them in jail and in jail they don’t have access to a lot of the care treatment and support,” she said.

Poitras said that presently there are no statistics available to indicate the percentage of incarcerated Aboriginal people and the rate of HIV or AIDS. However, her group is working to get those figures for Saskatchewan.

The plight of Aboriginal men and women in the justice system and the barriers that stop the treatment for addiction and of HIV will be the topic of discussion on Dec. 4 when All Nations Hope AIDS Network and the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network host a one-day event in Regina. The conference is one of a number that will take place the first week of December which marks Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week.

CAAN will also be collaborating with organizations in Winnipeg (Dec. 1), Halifax (Dec. 2), Iqaluit (Dec. 3), Toronto (Dec. 5), and Vancouver (Dec. 5 and 6) to look at the broader spectrum of AIDS in the Aboriginal community.

According to 2008 surveillance data from the Public Health Agency of Canada, Aboriginal people experience AIDS at a rate 3.6 times greater than other Canadians. Eight per cent of all people living with HIV and 12.5 per cent of all new HIV infections in Canada are Aboriginal. Aboriginal women and youth experience the highest rates.

The week-long events are a combination of keeping Aboriginal-related AIDS/HIV issues at the forefront, as well as promoting the work undertaken by CAAN, said executive director Ken Clement. CAAN recently received a five-year grant of $1.5 million to pursue community-based research across the country.

One of the biggest challenges facing organizations like CAAN, said Clement, is getting both the non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal populations to understand that AIDS is a wider issue that goes beyond the disease itself. That is why CAAN’s vision statement includes the organization turning its research into action.

“People forget that … we have to look at the health determinants that impact Aboriginal people,” Clement said.

There are many factors that contribute to the large number of Aboriginal people who have AIDS: colonization, the legacy of residential schools, poverty, housing conditions, homelessness, poor education, unemployment, not enough social programming, and limited resources.

“This point is often missed,” Clement said. “The social kind of issues that affect our people across Canada put us in a vulnerable situation to HIV and poor health standards generally.”

The Aboriginal population also needs to be educated, but the focus there is on the disease itself, which still has a stigma attached to it. Often times, especially on-reserve, those who have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS are ostracized and labelled, and community and family support is not available.

“We have to ensure that our Aboriginal leadership is aware and sensitive to the issues around HIV,” Clement said.

HIV does not have to be the death sentence it once was, said Poitras.

“Today with HIV you can live. It’s a disease that’s like a chronic illness today,” she said. “What we’re wanting to promote in our communities is that life with HIV after a diagnosis, yes, you have to look at your life mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically, but it’s not a death sentence anymore.”

The theme for this year’s AIDS Awareness Week is “Getting to Zero. Zero new infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths.”

“I think it’s time to be ambitious,” Poitras said. “It’s time now we took care of our own people. It’s time now to move forward and to be advocates once more.”