Imagine 11 Canadians fatally poisoned every day, with the death toll climbing every year. Imagine hospitals across the country dealing with a 27% surge in admissions to treat these poisonings, and a 73% increase in emergency room visits in Ontario alone.
Harm reduction and gay men’s HIV prevention could be considered two historic elements in our HIV response that have long stood separate from one another. Traditionally, HIV prevention with gay men focused on sexual risk, while harm reduction focused on risks associated with injection drug use. Both approaches have evolved over the decades and some might argue that safer sex is a form of harm reduction, but in the context of drug use, there has been little focus given to harm reduction in the context of gay men’s sexual health.
Indétectable = Intransmissible, PrEP, Traitement comme prévention… Si ces approches font aujourd’hui consensus parmi les experts communautaires et scientifiques du VIH, leur appropriation par un plus large public reste encore incertaine. Dans la communauté gaie, ce nouveau contexte de la prévention suscite encore des résistances ou des questionnements : il suffit d’engager la conversation sur le sujet, en ligne ou dans un bar, pour s’en apercevoir!
As the year winds to a close and we reflect on the past year, we’re looking back at all the important news shared through the CATIE Blog in 2018.
Despite the fact that harm reduction services and ideas are always started by people who use drugs, they are not always included in the design and delivery of these programs as they become more formalized, especially in healthcare settings and for medical issues related to drug use.
Canada’s overdose crisis continues to grow, claiming nearly 4,000 lives last year alone. In the midst of this emergency, more than 1,000 frontline workers converged in Edmonton last month for Stimulus 2018, Canada’s first national conference on harm reduction and drug policy.
