Category: Opinions | Page 8

Connected patients, connected providers: Delivering comprehensive, coordinated, team-based care to people living with HIV in Canada

September 28, 2017 • By Dr. Claire Kendall and Katie Ablett

Thanks to effective anti-HIV treatment, HIV has evolved into a chronic illness. However, people living with HIV often today also live with other physical and mental health conditions, which can be difficult to cope with, especially for those also coping with difficult socio-economic circumstances. To provide quality care to people living with HIV and other long-term medical and social conditions, health-care providers not only need to ensure that people living with HIV are engaged in quality health care, but we also need to enhance the capacity of Canadian HIV clinics to integrate and coordinate additional resources. By integrating and coordinating...

Is this the end for HCV drug development?

August 18, 2017 • By Sean Hosein

The last seven years have seen a whirlwind of hepatitis C virus (HCV) drug development. Each new treatment is generally more potent than the last. The latest treatments approved for HCV in Canada this week include Maviret (made by AbbVie) and Vosevi (made by Gilead). Clinical trials of these treatments, which people take in pill form, resulted in high rates of cure (usually greater than 95 per cent) with few serious side effects. Although it will be six months or more before these drugs ascend to provincial, territorial and other formularies, their approval signals that the end of drug development...

World Hepatitis Day: Finally something to celebrate?

July 28, 2017 • By Annika Ollner

Every year on July 28, we mark World Hepatitis Day with an event to educate, gather together, and also remember those we have lost from the hepatitis C community. This year, we should have much to celebrate: in early 2017, medications that had previously been unavailable were finally added to some formularies, including Ontario’s. This means that people with certain types of hepatitis C who have been waiting years to access safe, effective medication will finally be able to start treatment and be cured. For many, being cured means avoiding potentially fatal outcomes like liver failure and liver cancer. It...

U=U and the overly-broad criminalization of HIV nondisclosure

June 6, 2017 • By Nicholas Caivano and Sandra Ka Hon Chu

People living with HIV in Canada have been charged with some of the most serious offences in the Criminal Code, even in cases of consensual sex where there was negligible or no risk of HIV transmission, no actual transmission and no intent to transmit. The Undetectable=Untransmittable (“U=U”) campaign is based on scientific research, including the ground-breaking PARTNER study, establishing that when a person living with HIV on treatment maintains an undetectable viral load for at least six months, the risk of transmitting the virus through sex is effectively non-existent. As advocates for persons living with HIV await action from federal,...

6 things you can do to show solidarity with people who use drugs and help end the opioid crisis

May 26, 2017 • By CATIE

By Zoë Dodd & Alexander McClelland At the opening of the recent 25th Harm Reduction International Conference in Montreal, the Minister of Health Jane Philpott announced that more people have died in the overdose epidemic in the past few years than died during the height of the AIDS crisis in the late 80s and early 90s. In 2016, it is estimated that 2,300 people died of overdose—preventable deaths caused by the prohibition of drugs. In response to that sobering and sad announcement, we wrote an article asking for people engaged in the response to HIV to show support and solidarity...

Shame Canada: Canadian Task Force ignores expert advice in new hepatitis C screening guidelines

April 28, 2017 • By Jennifer van Gennip

The Canadian Task Force on Preventative Health Care (CTFPHC) released its HCV Screening Guidelines today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday. To the dismay of experts across Canada including hepatitis C specialists, advocacy groups, and stakeholders, the new screening guidelines ignore expert advice regarding who should be tested for Hep C, setting a dangerous public health policy where dollars come first and the health of Canadians comes last.