Category: Opinions | Page 5

Community pharmacists: Underutilized resources in the HIV care team

September 9, 2019 • By Mike Stuber

Pharmacists are drug therapy experts. We are responsible for ensuring medications are used safely, responsibly and effectively to maximize the benefits of treatment. This is especially true in the provision of care to people living with HIV. But community pharmacists are often seen as separate from the HIV care team. We are largely left out of therapeutic decision-making, despite our central role in dispensing medications. But community pharmacists have demonstrated that we can play a vital role in HIV care.

Blueprint for Hepatitis C Elimination in Canada: A priority populations and health equity approach – Part One

August 26, 2019 • By Dr. Jordan Feld, Carrielynn Lund, Fozia Tanveer

An introduction by Dr. Jordan Feld, University Health Network Nearly 250,000 Canadians are living with hepatitis C (HCV), yet 45% are undiagnosed and remain at risk of developing complications related to long-term liver damage like liver cancer. Hepatitis C causes more years of life lost than any other infectious disease in Canada. Fortunately, with the arrival of safe treatment that cures more than 95% of people, combined with simple diagnostic methods and effective prevention strategies, we now have the tools to eliminate hepatitis C.

Can Halifax open Atlantic Canada’s first legal overdose prevention site? Yes, we can!

August 14, 2019 • By Matthew Bonn

This blog post is a follow-up from an earlier post published on July 11, 2019. As I work on a new funding proposal, this statement strikes me: over 11,500 people in Canada have lost their lives as a result of opioid-related overdoses between January 2016 and December 2018 and we keep losing people every day. So many lives lost! And why is that? The evidence is clear that overdose prevention sites save lives! After I returned from a hands-on training in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver, one of the hardest hit places in the overdose crisis, it became even...

Can Halifax open Atlantic Canada’s first legal overdose prevention site?

July 11, 2019 • By Matthew Bonn

“Chasing the new is dangerous to society.” I read this quote at an activist art exhibition and it got me thinking about Halifax, my city, and of the group that I belong to. What if the old way of healthcare is actually dangerous to society at a whole?

Hepatitis C: From discovery to elimination in 40 years?

July 3, 2019 • By Melisa Dickie

We are in the midst of an incredibly dynamic moment in the world of medicine and public health. Hepatitis C research has progressed so rapidly that the virus could be eliminated as a public health threat only 40 years after its discovery in 1989.

A step by step process on how we can support mothers living with HIV

March 11, 2019 • By Dr. Mona Loutfy and Dr. Sean (Ari) Bitnun

As doctors specializing in the clinical care of women living with HIV, we often get questions about breastfeeding and the transmission of HIV. Here’s just one e-mail we received from an infectious disease specialist outside Ontario: “I am seeing a young African woman as a patient who is HIV positive, had advanced disease, but now is suppressed. She is pregnant and had two deliveries in Africa, where she was encouraged to breastfeed. She is still quite adamant about breastfeeding despite my counselling otherwise. How do you manage these situations and what is your approach to this?”