CATIE Blog | Page 20 | HIV and hepatitis C news and opinions

Four questions with the Manitoba HIV/STBBI Collective Impact Network

November 30, 2020 • By Mike Payne and Laurie Ringaert

The Manitoba HIV/STBBI Collective Impact Network is an initiative to eliminate sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBIs) as a public health threat through collective and collaborative action. The network is hosted by Nine Circles Community Health Centre in Winnipeg. Mike Payne and Laurie Ringaert, the strategic facilitators for the Network, answered a few questions from CATIE about how the Network is addressing STBBIs in the province.

Transitioning from incarceration to the community: Reducing risks and improving lives of people who use substances

November 23, 2020 • By Michelle Proctor-Simms, Lindsay Wallace, Cindy MacIsaac, Matthew Bonn, Megan Horochuk and Melody MacLachlan

To help incarcerated people who use substances successfully integrate back into their communities, Direction 180 started the Peers Assisting and Lending Support (PALS) program in January 2019 through harm reduction funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada. Direction 180 is a community-based organization that offers an opioid treatment program in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

More options for HIV testing in Canada

November 4, 2020 • By Zak Knowles

Testing is an essential part of the HIV cascade of care. People living with HIV can only be linked to treatment, care and support services if they have been diagnosed. Once a person is diagnosed, effective treatment will enable them to live a long and healthy life, to have HIV-negative children, and not have to worry about passing on HIV to their sex partners. People who test negative and are at ongoing risk for HIV can be linked to prevention, harm reduction and other services as necessary.

HIV self-testing: An unnecessary disruption or a democratizing equalizer?

November 4, 2020 • By Dr. Nitika Pant Pai

I feel like a historian sometimes, when I reflect on each meeting or conference session’s proceedings that I have attended internationally, nationally and locally on the topic of HIV self-testing in the past decade or so. I can see patterns in behaviour, consonance and dissonance of thought, speech and action, and I am left in awe and wonder why we humans don’t end up doing the right thing for other fellow humans in need. For key populations, who need our voice to get the products and services they so rightly deserve.

Celebrating Timothy Ray Brown, “The Berlin Patient”

October 21, 2020 • By Sean Hosein

Earlier this month, we received the sad news of the passing of Timothy Ray Brown. Also known as “the Berlin patient”, Timothy was the first person in the world to be cured of HIV. While he remained HIV-negative until his death, the leukemia that he had successfully fought before returned in 2019. It was this leukemia diagnosis that prompted the historic treatment that cured Timothy of HIV. When scheduled to undergo a stem cell transplant as cancer treatment, doctors matched him with a donor who had an uncommon genetic mutation known to confer resistance to HIV. Although he suffered complications...

Satellite Sites: Providing harm reduction from the homes of people who use drugs

October 13, 2020 • By Liam Michaud, Gillian Kolla and Rhiannon Thomas

The term “satellite sites” is used to refer to informal harm reduction hubs operating out of the homes of people who use drugs. Operating in Toronto for more than 20 years, these sites offer access to sterile drug use supplies outside of more formal settings like health centres. Although many satellite sites offer much more than this – including naloxone and overdose response training, needle disposal and referrals to healthcare services. Satellite programs emerged from the recognition that people who use drugs were already doing this work within their communities, operating informally to meet harm reduction needs and respond to a range of other health needs.