POSITIVE LIVING BC eNews 49

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This weekly resource is committed to providing our HIV-positive community with relevant, newsworthy and meaningful information.

POSITIVE LIVING BC news

Community Forum: HIV & the Brain
Sleep Workshop
Positive Women's University

BC HIV news

Elimination of TaxiSaver programme
Supportive housing offers sex workers safety: study
B.C. foster mom has Hepatitis C lawsuit dismissed
Invasive and ineffective: BC's first-responder bill denounced
Fraser Health urges Abbotsford to get rid of harm-reduction bylaw

Canada HIV news

Changes go hand-in-hand with reforms
Canadian cohort shows viral suppression most likely with atazanavir/ritonavir-based HIV treatment after 6 months

International HIV news

Advocates: HIV prevention pill could save lives
President Obama's Support of Same-Sex Marriage Marks an Important Step in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS
Facebook Ads Drive DKT's Safe Sex Message
Panic rises in Greece as 25 prostitutes test positive for HIV

Community Forum: HIV & the Brain

Join Positive Living BC for a free Community Forum about the relationship between HIV and the brain!

Presenters:

Maggie Atkinson BA, LLB, LSM, O. Ont
Sean B. Rourke PhD, Scientific & Executive Director, Ontario HIV Treatment Network Director, CIHR Centre for REACH in HIV/AIDS & University Without Walls, Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto

RSVP by May 18 to
Jen MacPherson jenm@positivelivingbc.org
or 604.893.2239

Sleep Workshop

Join us for a workshop discussing common reasons why you may be feeling fatigued and exploring simple ways to improve quality of sleep.

Presenter:

David Evans, Founder of Sleep Student

RSVP by June 4 to Jen Macpherson

jenm@positivelivingbc.org
or 604.893.2239

Read more

Positive Women's University

Positive Living BC presents a unique retreat-style "university" where instructors are also participants. Learn, teach, connect, rejuvenate with other HIV+ women.

It will be held at Loon Lake Camp, Maple Ridge BC, from October 19-21, 2012.

To submit an application and workshop proposal please visit www.positivelivingbc.org/womens-university For more information contact support@positivelivingbc.org or call 604.893.2200.

Elimination of TaxiSaver programme

TransLink has decided to eliminate the TaxiSaver program, which allows seniors and people with disabilities to have same-day transportation service at an affordable cost. The elimination will be phased in over several months, and new HandyDART users will not be able to purchase TaxiSavers after August 1.

Here is more information about what has happened. Please pass this information on to whoever you think might be interested.

Supportive housing offers sex workers safety: study

Female sex workers living in and operating from supportive-housing units have less adversarial relations with police, says a new study.

The study was published Wednesday in the "American Journal of Public Health" and was authored by researchers from the University of B.C. and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS.

Based on interviews with 39 women living on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the study also found female sex workers living in the housing units were exposed to less violence and disease, such as HIV.

The study was released just a month after Ontario's top court struck down a ban on bawdy houses.

It also comes amid the inquiry into serial killer Robert Pickton, which has heard the poor relationship between sex workers and police makes them reluctant to report abuse.

B.C. foster mom has Hepatitis C lawsuit dismissed

The B.C. Court of Appeal has thrown out the case of a former foster parent suing the government after being allegedly infected with Hepatitis C by a drugged-up teen client.

Teresita Iezzi claims the government failed to warn her that the teen, who accidentally stabbed her in 2001 with a needle while the teen was shooting up heroin, had the sometimes-fatal liver disease.

The government tried to have the case tossed out on the grounds that she had not filed the suit within the two-year time limitation, but a B.C. Supreme Court judge dismissed that argument.

The government appealed the Supreme Court decision and in a ruling released Thursday, that appeal was upheld and Iezzi’s action was dismissed.

Iezzi was diagnosed with the disease in 2002 and underwent chemotherapy for nine months in 2003. She did not connect the infection with the needle incident until one day in 2003 when she saw the teen on the street.

Invasive and ineffective: BC's first-responder bill denounced

Health and privacy rights advocates are lambasting a controversial bill that would force blood tests on patients whose bodily fluids come in contact with first responders.

HIV/AIDS groups, the BC Civil Liberties Association, the provincial privacy commissioner and the provincial health officer say the bill, introduced last week by BC Labour Minister Margaret MacDiarmid, is ineffective and invasive.

“We think it’s a crude overreaction,” says Micheal Vonn, policy director for the BC Civil Liberties Association. “It’s unjustified and unnecessary, and it takes very, very cavalierly the legal and ethical doctrine of informed consent.”

Fraser Health urges Abbotsford to get rid of harm-reduction bylaw

Fraser Health is urging the City of Abbotsford to repeal its anti-harm reduction bylaw to help fight the spread of infectious disease and decrease mortality rates for drug users.

“We certainly think that the anti-harm reduction bylaw could be playing a role in higher rates of hospitalization and incidence of disease in Abbotsford,” public health director David Portesi said in an interview Friday.

Abbotsford’s zoning bylaw was amended in 2005 to prohibit any individual or organization — including Fraser Health, which oversees the provision of health services in the region — from establishing harm-reduction facilities like needle exchanges or injection sites in the area.

According to a fact sheet distributed by Fraser Health, Abbotsford’s hepatitis C infection rate in 2010 was 64.4 per 100,000, compared to a 2009 rate of 54.9 in B.C. and 33.7 nationally.

Additionally, approximately 29 Abbotsford residents are admitted to hospital for overdoses annually.

Changes go hand-in-hand with reforms

Doctors serve their patients best when they focus their energy on treating disease based on accurate diagnoses. Unfortunately, Professor Mark Tyndall and some of his colleagues seem to prefer political grandstanding.

Contrary to Tyndall's overheated claims, there is no change in Interim Federal Health coverage for treatments affecting public health and public safety. Treatment, including prescription medications, will continue to be provided to all asylum claimants for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV, and for other medications necessary to protect public health, such as anti-psychotic drugs.

Nor is there any change to primary care for the vast majority of asylum claimants, who will continue to have access to the full range of basic services that all Canadians receive through their provincial health-care system, including treatment for chronic disease.

Atazanavir/ritonavir strongest among people with a history of injecting drug use

Antiretroviral therapy based on the ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitor atazanavir (Reyataz) was more likely to achieve virological suppression after six months than treatment containing the non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI) efavirenz (Sustiva, also in the combination pill Atripla) among people with HIV starting treatment in the Canadian province of British Columbia, investigators report in the online edition of AIDS.

The study also showed that people with a history of injecting drug use (IDU) could achieve good virological outcomes at month six, most especially with regimens containing atazanavir.

Advocates: HIV prevention pill could save lives

CHICAGO (AP) — A pill to prevent HIV infection is already being given to some healthy people, but without government approval, it remains out of reach and too costly for many who need it.

Doctors, patients and advocates say that would change if the Food and Drug Administration takes a landmark step and allows the pill, Truvada, to be marketed for prevention. The drug has been used for some time as a treatment for those already infected with the AIDS virus.

"This is a pretty radical step, but I think it's a necessary step," said Dr. Lisa Sterman of San Francisco, who prescribes the drug for already infected patients and those who are healthy but at risk of getting the virus from their partners or through risky sex.

"We've come as far as we can with condom use and safe sex strategies," Sterman said.

A panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration late Thursday endorsed using Truvada as a preventive.

President Obama's Support of Same-Sex Marriage Marks an Important Step in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS

PR Newswire

SAN FRANCISCO, May 9, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO, May 9, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today President Obama made history by declaring his support of same-sex marriage, becoming the first sitting president to take such a position, and moving the nation closer to creating the AIDS-free generation he so boldly envisions.

Facebook Ads Drive DKT's Safe Sex Message

Where's the last place you had sex? That's one question in a list that DKT International, a nonprofit organization promoting family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention, asked in an online campaign running in Brazil. Google AdWords and Facebook Ads drove traffic to a dedicated Web site where consumers were asked numerous questions related to their sexual experience.

The online campaign ran for 45 days, ending April 15. It asked consumers to post a description of their last sexual experience, location, partner gender, and position. It also asked participants to reveal their favorite type of condom. The DKT Condom Tester Program in Brazil that ran last year resulted in the prevention of nearly 10 million infant deaths and about 250,000 unwanted pregnancies in 2011.

Panic rises in Greece as 25 prostitutes test positive for HIV

The scandal of prostitutes testing positive for HIV continues to create panic in Greece, as the number of women confirmed as HIV positive rises to 25.

The number of prostitutes testing positive for HIV continues to rise on a daily basis as the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KEELPNO) carries out tests to detect the condition. Greek authorities continue to publish photographs of the infected women, whilst charging them with intentionally inflicting gross bodily harm.

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