Tag: Women | CATIE Blog

Five key recommendations to advance the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women living with HIV

February 13, 2023 • By Zoe Osborne, Valerie Nicholson and Angela Kaida

Love Positive Women is an international movement that invites us to celebrate women living with HIV around the globe. This annual event is an opportunity to engage in acts of caring for the women living with HIV in our community, both in private acts and in pushing for systems change. In Canada, women make up approximately 25% of all people living with HIV. Despite this, women’s voices, priorities, and distinct needs have been underrepresented in the national conversation about HIV. Particularly in the space of sexual and reproductive health and rights, there are few initiatives that focus specifically on women...

Janet Conners, HIV activist extraordinaire, 1956 – 2022

September 19, 2022 • By Louise Binder and Ron Rosenes

Some of us may be hearing Janet Conners’ name for the first time, but all of us in the HIV/AIDS community owe her a debt of gratitude for the remarkable contributions she made while on this earth.

Abortion access in Canada: Could what’s happening in the U.S. happen here?

August 29, 2022 • By Coral Maloney

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there are a lot of people asking: what is the current state of abortion access in Canada? Could what’s happening in the U.S. happen here?

HIV Made Me Fabulous: Celebrating positive women

February 11, 2022 • By Zoë Osborne and Azra Bhanji

Using Valentine’s Day as a backdrop, Love Positive Women is an annual celebration of women living with HIV. As we honour the positive women around the globe, we must also address the inequities that they face navigating sex, dating and love. How can we ensure that the rights of women living with HIV to have pleasurable and satisfying relationships are protected, supported and uplifted?

Gendering the Scene: We need to listen to women and gender-diverse people who use drugs

June 22, 2020 • By Sandra Ka Hon Chu and Cécile Kazatchkine

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.

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?”