Many creative solutions have been implemented to keep people who use drugs safe, and these solutions need to be scaled up and continued beyond the pandemic, to reach people who don’t live in areas with adequate harm reduction services.
Immediately after Ontario declared the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as being a public health emergency in mid-March 2020, all visits from family and friends and programming were suspended in prisons in the province.
With little information from the Ministry of the Solicitor General regarding their efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, the Prisoners’ HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN) was flooded with phone calls from prisoners concerned about their health and the well-being of their family and friends.
This June, CATIE and the Canadian Network on Hepatitis C (CanHepC) co-hosted a webinar on sustaining the hepatitis C response before and after the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. We invited leaders in the hepatitis C field to explore the challenges that the pandemic has posed for hepatitis C elimination efforts, but also the opportunities that could be leveraged. Here are just five of the ways we can do this:
Nova Scotia is no stranger to syphilis. Back in 2012, the province saw a spike in cases – almost double compared to the year before. In early 2020, another outbreak was identified with a 60% increase between 2018 and 2019. This latest outbreak was different in two key ways: it was predominantly among women, and not focused solely in Halifax.
Over the past several years, Canada has been in the grip of an overdose crisis. We have seen the devastating effects both of a contaminated drug supply and of punitive laws that restrict access of people who use drugs to effective treatment and support. Now we are facing the twin crisis of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, which has radically altered the way we interact with one another and affected the drug supply chain.
Are you interested in hosting a conversation in your community or organization about HIV? Looking for some tips on how to do this? Look no further than the just launched Strong Medicine Guide, an accompanying resource for the Strong Medicine film that came out in 2018.
