POSITIVE LIVING BC eNews 41
Welcome to the POSITIVE LIVING BC eNews
This weekly resource is committed to providing our HIV-positive community with relevant, newsworthy and meaningful information.
POSITIVE LIVING BC news
- HIV-positive models needed!
- Outdoorsmen - Vancouver Art Gallery
- AccolAIDS Members ticket lottery
- Important CHF update: monthly income threshold decrease
- HIV health and rehabilitation survey
BC HIV news
- 16th Annual BC Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Conference
- Commissioner orders health audits released to Vancouver Courier
- The history of St Paul’s (and yes, it’s totally haunted)
Canada HIV news
- HIV-positive First Nations peoples encouraged to tell their story
- Oilsands workers high risk for STI's
- Funding crisis threatening Global Fund’s fight to end AIDS calls for Canadian leadership
International HIV news
- US drugmaker's HIV prevention pill draws concern
- South Africa recalls 'faulty' ANC celebration condoms
- Hepatitis C warning for HIV-positive men
- Greg Louganis on gold medals, HIV and Matthew Mitcham
- How accurate are rapid HIV tests?
HIV-positive models needed!
POSITIVE LIVING BC is looking for models of any age, race, size, sexuality and gender identity to participate in a professional photoshoot in February (date to be determined, lunch provided).
- are you open and proud about your HIV-positive status?
- are you confident enough to let everyone see how involved you are with POSITIVE LIVING BC?
Your photo might be included on the www.positivelivingbc.org homepage and in other online and printed resources published by the Society.
For more information please contact:
Outdoorsmen - Vancouver Art Gallery
Joing the Outdoorsmen at Vancouver Art Gallery is the fifth-largest art gallery in Canada and the largest in Western Canada. Its permanent collection of about 10,000 artworks includes more than 200 major works by Emily Carr, the Group of Seven, Jeff Wall and Marc Chagall.
- Cost: Donation
- Location: Vancouver Art Gallery (Hornby Street entrance)
- Contact: richardh@positivelivingbc.org
- Date: Tuesday, 7 February 2012 - 5:30pm
AccolAIDS Members ticket lottery
AccolAIDS is a gala dinner and auction honouring our heroes in the BC HIV/AIDS movement:
- Sunday, April 29th, 2012 from 6pm - 10 pm
- Vancouver Convention Centre West
- Dress: Semi-formal
Free tickets are available to Full Members of POSITIVE LIVING BC on a random, lottery basis. The draw will take place at 12 noon on April 6th, 2012 and the winners will be contacted the following week.
To sign-up for the lottery and for more information, please contact:
- POSITIVE LIVING BC Reception
- 604.893.2200
Important CHF update: monthly income threshold decrease
POSITIVE LIVING BC Members who access the Complementary Health Fund (CHF) will know that in 2011 the monthly dividend had to be reduced to $35.
Unfortunately the CHF may not be sustainable even at that level in 2012 so, after a careful review, the Board has decided to lower the monthly income threshold for CHF recipients from $3,000 to $2,000 beginning in April 2012. In other words, only those Members whose gross monthly income is $2,000 or less will be applicable for the CHF.
HIV health and rehabilitation survey
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is currently pre-testing a survey with a small number of people living with HIV to learn if there are things that can be done to make the survey better before it is launched across Canada.
The survey aims to discover the types of health challenges people living with HIV experience, and covers whether they use rehabilitation services such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy, complementary and alternative therapies, and other health and community services. It will also find out about individual strategies people living with HIV use to face day to day health challenges living with HIV.
16th Annual BC Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Conference
The Healing Our Spirit BC Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Society has announced the 16th Annual BC Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Conference:
“Weaving Collectively the Intricacies of HIV/AIDS through Culture and Knowledge”
April 16-17, 2012
Kamloops Convention Centre, Kamloops, BC
Commissioner orders health audits released to Vancouver Courier
The public may soon be able to read more internal reports about provincial health services after a ruling ordered them opened up.
A year ago, a Vancouver Courier journalist applied though the BC Freedom of Information law for summaries of five internal audits from the Provincial Health Services Authority. The PHSA refused, and an appeal was sent to the information and privacy commissioner in Victoria.
On Jan. 19, the commissioner’s adjudicator Jay Fedorak ordered two of the summaries released in full, and parts of the other three.
The history of St Paul’s (and yes, it’s totally haunted)
If you’re ever taking a stroll down Burrard Street or happen to take a tumble whilst scoping the area, check out St. Paul’s Hospital a little closer. In addition to being a state-of-the-art health care facility, the institution is a unique landmark and point of reference in the study of what makes our city so awesome.
The gold rush at the end of the 19th century resulted in a huge population influx for the Vancouver area. Luckily for those frost-bitten gold-diggers, two members of the Montreal-based Sisters of Providence had recently set up shop on seven lots of property bordering what were then the city limits, purchased for a whopping $9,000, and they were ready to treat their wounds.
HIV-positive First Nations peoples encouraged to tell their story
Members of the Aboriginal community living with HIV and AIDS need to speak up and share their stories in order to gain strength and persevere, was the message delivered to Concordia students last week.
“We need to talk about [HIV and AIDS], especially given that rates of HIV are on the increase in our communities,” said Doris Peltier, an aboriginal woman living with AIDS, whose speech was part of the Concordia community lecture series on HIV / AIDS.
Peltier spoke about how she had been on a trajectory for getting AIDS since the age of three, when her family was torn apart by the residential school system.
Oilsands workers high risk for STI's
Men working in the oilsands and Aboriginals living in the area are considered high risk for contracting STIs.
Alberta Health and Wellness released their 2010 Annual Report on Notifiable Sexually Transmitted Infections, Monday, showing the first provincial decrease in STI rates since 2004 and the second consecutive year showing a decrease in new cases of HIV and AIDS.
However, the high numbers of young adult males and Aboriginals in the area have drawn the government’s attention to the region, and Alberta’s chief medical officer Dr. André Corriveau says they will continue to keep an eye on the oilsands.
Funding crisis threatening Global Fund’s fight to end AIDS calls for Canadian leadership
This week, the world marks the 10-year anniversary of the launch of the most successful global health effort in history - the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Nearly eight million lives have been saved through Global Fund investments to date, and even greater progress might be on the horizon, thanks to recent scientific breakthroughs and the achievements of the last decade. Yet this anniversary will be marked by protest marches in Zambia, and by similar activities in Nairobi and around the world. Why?
US drugmaker's HIV prevention pill draws concern
US drugmaker Gilead recently updated its application with the federal Food and Drug Administration for approval to market its HIV treatment medication Truvada as a HIV prevention pill.
If the FDA approves Truvada for preventive use, it “would be the first agent indicated for uninfected individuals to reduce the risk of acquiring HIV through sex,” according to a company statement at the time of the filing last month.
Gilead’s application, however, has sparked debate among public health advocates who argue that the wide availability of the drug would discourage safe sex and would, in fact, increase the incidence of HIV.
South Africa recalls 'faulty' ANC celebration condoms
South Africa's leading HIV group has warned that large numbers of "faulty" condoms are in circulation in the Bloemfontein area, despite a recall.
Health authorities have recalled more than one million condoms handed out ahead of the recent African National Congress centenary celebrations. They say they are still investigating claims that the condoms are porous.
A batch of 8,700 boxes - which all bore the South African Bureau of Standards stamp - were delivered to guesthouses, hotels, restaurants and bars before the ANC celebrations. The Free State Health Department says it is recalling the estimated 1.35 million condoms as a "precautionary measure" - and urged the public not to panic.
Hepatitis C warning for HIV-positive men
A new report is calling for raised awareness of the risks posed by Hepatitis C to gay men living with HIV.
The UK National AIDS Trust said the implications of Hepatitis C and HIV co-infection on health can be severe, with liver disease one of the major causes of serious illness and fatality in HIV-positive people. According to the Trust’s report, 7% of HIV positive gay men are co-infected with Hepatitis C. In most cases, no symptoms are experienced after infection.
Generally, about 25% of people infected with Hepatitis C clear the virus naturally from their blood during acute infection but three quarters will go on to develop chronic Hepatitis C, which targets the liver. And of those who successfully clear Hepatitis C through treatment, a significant percentage are re-infected within a short time.
Greg Louganis on gold medals, HIV and Matthew Mitcham
He won his first Olympic medal at the age of 16. Eight years later he became the first man in 56 years to win two diving golds at the same Olympics. Four years after that, in Seoul, he added two more gold medals to his haul, despite famously hitting his head on the springboard during qualifying.
But Louganis had a secret he wanted to be free of: six months before the 1988 Olympics he’d tested positive for HIV. He’d kept the diagnosis secret for a simple reason: the Korean authorities wouldn’t have let him in for the Olympics had they known his status.
How accurate are rapid HIV tests?
Rapid HIV tests perform slightly worse when testing oral samples in comparison to blood, according to a new study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases on Jan. 24.
Researchers from Canada, led by Nitika Pant Pai, M.D., of McGill University, conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies on rapid HIV antibody testing in adults, specifically the OraQuick advance rapid HIV-1/2, from Jan. 1, 2000, to June 1, 2011.
They compared sensitivity (the percentage of true positive results) and specificity (the percentage of true negative results) of the tests.
