Officials fear and AIDS epidemic

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Alberta AIDS officials are worried Natives could be the next high risk group to be attacked by the killer disease.

There are signs it has already started.

AIDS groups in Calgary say they're treating a still small, but ever increasing number of Natives who have tested HIV positive and area in the early stages of the disease.

It's the same in B.C., where the province's top government AIDS official estimates as many as 100 Natives have tested positive and are suffering from the initial stages of the always fatal disease.

But the alarm bells won't start ringing until Natives start "dropping like flies," warn officials in Alberta, B.C. and a leading American Native sexuality specialist.

Many officials and experts who deal with AIDS fear it's only a matter of time before that happens. They are worried remote reserves and Metis communities could be amount the worst hit.

Although increasing numbers of Natives are testing positive, organizations helping AIDS victims say there are no official figures.

Dr. Bryce Larke, medical director of Alberta's AIDS program, admits there's a "devastating possibility" of an epidemic among the province's Native population.

But the figures don't show it because the province's statistics for those who've tested HIV positive are not broken down along ethnic lines.

Ken Ward, a Native from Enoch Cree Nation near Edmonton, has gone public to declare he has tested positive for HIV and he's launched an awareness campaign.

Larke says "rumor" has it that another Native, in southern Alberta, has already died of AIDS-related causes.

Various factors put the Native population at risk, he says, including a higher rate for sexually transmitted diseases (STD's) than among the general population and poorer over-all health.

The community is also ravaged by drug and alcohol abuse and poor nutrition, which medical experts say makes Natives more susceptible to the virus.

Larke says Indian reserves and aboriginal communities in remote regions also have less than adequate health care.

It's a deadly combination, says Billy Rogers, an urban Native and community health programs expert at the University of Oklahoma.

The native STD rates, combined with serious problems with alcohol and drug abuse and inaccessibility to good health care or medical facilities, means Natives are a high risk group who, he fears, are candidates to he hit hard continent-wide by AIDS.

Rogers, a Kiowa Indian who was in Calgary recently to give a Native sexuality and AIDS prevention seminar, says the rise in Native AIDS can easily be traced to these factors and "the high rate of sexual activity" among Indian youth.

Remote reserves on both sides of the border seem to be at highest risk, he says, noting Canada seems to be far behind the U.S. in providing AIDS education designed for aboriginal people. At least 112 Indians in the U.S. are known to have AIDS.

Canadian Native spokesperson - and health statistics - say urban Natives are up to 10 times more likely than non-Natives to contract STDs like gonorrhea and syphillis. The figures on reserves and in northern communities are up to a half dozen times as high as among the general population.

Daniel Holia, executive director with AIDS Calgary, says increasing numbers of HIV-positive Natives are coming to his organization for help.

AIDS Calgary plans to hire a Native worker to deal with Natives who have the disease.

Holina declined to say how many aboriginal people with AIDS his organization helps, noting "the numbers have been small but I anticipate increases."

Dr. Jay Wortman, associate director of the B.C. ministry of health's sexually transmitted diseases control center, says Native organizations and health officials are gearing up to combat the spread of the disease in B.C. Native communities.

Also worried about the danger AIDS poses for isolated Native communities, Wortman, a Metis from Alberta, estimates between 40 and 100 Natives in B.C. have tested HIV positive and arein the early stages of the disease.

The AIDS rate is highest in the cities, e says, but warns that Natives coming to major cities from remote areas "engage in risky behavior" like having unprotected sex and sharing needles with others to inject drugs before returning home.

Intravenous drug users are at high risk for AIDS because infected blood can be transmitted by needles. It is also spread sexually through body fluids like semen.

AIDS experts warn there is a multiplier affect, that any person having sex with someone who has been in contact with an AIDS victim also serves as a carrier of the killer disease.

Larke says Health and Welfare Canada, which overseas health services to status Indians on reserves, is acting to deal with the potential crisis.

But he too, says the problem won't be taken as seriously as it should because "we're not having Natives drop dead of AIDS."

Known for his outspokeness, Larke asks "How long do we have to wait, how long for the alarm signals? 50 to 100 (dead of AIDS) before the problem stares us in the face?

"The complacency has to be overcome."

He says a consortium of concerned agencies in Calgary, including Native organizations, is working with Ottawa to set up and AIDS outreach program that includes a needle-exchanged program.

The program could make clean needles available to drug users at no cost.

Larke says a similar program was recently approved for Edmonton.

Wortman says specific efforts have to be made to deal with AIDS among the Native population.

Organizations like AIDS Calgary are "great organizations but they are mainstream organizations, organizations of white, middle-class, well-educated gay men," he says.

"Gay aboriginal people - and there are just as many of them as there are in any other population - don't feel part of that group. They are more aboriginal than they are gay.