POSITIVE LIVING BC news
- Suits Dinner Club - Chinatown Tour
- Ou+Doorsmen Summer Seawall Rollerblading or Biking
- Sleep Workshop
BC HIV news
- Vancouver International AIDS Candlelight Memorial
- B.C. privacy watchdog raises series of red flags
- British Columbia Expands Coverage Under PharmaCare Plan for New Drug for Hepatitis C
Canada HIV news
- Guelph tattoo artist upset over public health advisory
- Ottawa has second chance to save millions of lives
- Blood-filled needles create anxiety in Sherbrooke
- Should hiding HIV status always be a crime?
International HIV news
- A Changing Landscape in Fighting AIDS - Scientist and Community Leaders Look Ahead in 2012
- India's shunned transgenders struggle to survive
- Grandmothers stand united in Canada and Africa
- National News: International AIDS Vaccine Day
Suits Dinner Club - Chinatown Tour
The next Suits Dinner is Monday, May 28th. Join tour leader Bob Sung for a tour of Chinatown followed by dinner at Newtown Bakery.
Please RSVP to Richard H.: richardh@positivelivingbc.org
When: Monday, May 28th at 5:30
Where: Meet at 5:30 at the Chinese Culture Centre Courtyard, 50 E. Pender St.; dinner at Newtown Bakery, 158 E. Pender St.
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Ou+Doorsmen Summer Seawall Rollerblading or Biking
All Summer starting May 18th Ou+doorsmen is hosting Stanley Park Seawall rollerblading and biking! Starting at the "whirlygig" at the Georgia Street entrance to Stanley Park, it will occur 8:30 a.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays weather permitting.
For more information contact Richard H.: richardh@positivelivingbc.org
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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
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Vancouver International AIDS Candlelight Memorial
There will be a candlelight memorial Sunday May 20th in honour of those living with, affected by and lost to HIV/AIDS. The theme of this year's Memorial is "Promoting Health and Dignity Together." There will be speakers, singers, ceremonies, and the lighting of candles. For more information please visit the AIDS Vancouver (the host community organization) website below.
When: Sunday May 20th at 8:00pm
Where: Alexandra Park, 1755 Beach Avenue at Bidwell
Website: http://www.aidsvancouver.org/community/events/vancouver-international-aids-candlelight-memorial
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B.C. privacy watchdog raises series of red flags
VICTORIA — British Columbia’s privacy watchdog is demanding the province change four pieces of legislation — and in one case scrap a bill altogether — because of concerns over personal privacy and government transparency.
Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham has sent four critical letters to provincial ministers this month — the most recent Friday — chastising them for a host of problems in their bills.
It’s rare for an independent watchdog such as Denham to raise so many red flags in such a short period of time, and the province’s Opposition NDP says it is an indication of sloppy government work being rushed through the legislature in the final days of the spring session.
Denham has asked government to withdraw its Emergency Intervention Disclosure Act, which would let emergency workers get court orders to compel blood samples from people in high-risk situations.
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British Columbia Expands Coverage Under PharmaCare Plan for New Drug for Hepatitis C
British Columbia's government has announced that its PharmaCare plan will begin providing boceprevir for hepatitis C patients who meet certain eligibility requirements. Known by the trade names Victrelis and Victrelis Triple, the medication is used in combination with other drugs and has been shown to boost cure rates by up to 25 percent. Boceprevir gained Health Canada approval last summer. Providing the drug will cost up to $50 million (US $50 million) during the next three years, the government said.
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Guelph tattoo artist upset over public health advisory
GUELPH — Shannyn Moss claims an advisory issued by public health Tuesday urging any of Moss’s tattoo clients to be tested for hepatitis B, C and HIV is slandering her name and ruining her business before it even gets started.
But the medical officer of health maintains that Moss has been operating an unlicensed and uninspected tattoo business from her own home for a number of years, and that in effect, she brought this on herself.
“We know this particular facility is in breach of inspection practice and may have used expired equipment,” Dr. Nicola Mercer, medical officer of health for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health, said in an interview Wednesday. “There were significant lapses in protocol, there was an absence of consent forms and she serviced a number of underage recipients. The reality is she wasn’t following the bylaws or the regulations.”
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Ottawa has second chance to save millions of lives
Canadians want to take concrete action on behalf of those in developing countries who are needlessly suffering from fully treatable ailments. They want to help millions of people worldwide gain access to live-saving, affordable medicine.
Our politicians have this very opportunity in the form of Bill C-398, currently making its way through Parliament. The bill seeks to fix Canada’s flawed Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR), an eight-year-old law that was supposed to make it easier to send lower-cost generic drugs to countries that can’t afford to pay top dollar for brand-name drugs.
Despite the best intentions, the law never worked. It was so riddled with cumbersome regulations and red tape that only one shipment of medicine has been processed since 2004.
Bill C-398, a private member’s bill, would untangle that red tape once and for all, allowing the legislation to work the way it was intended.
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Blood-filled needles create anxiety in Sherbrooke
SHERBROOKE, QUE.—Patrick Beaudette’s nightmare happened mid-afternoon in the most unexpected of places: under the glaring fluorescent lights of the men’s section at his local Zellers department store.
Having found a pair of jeans his size, he scooped them up in his left hand to carry them to the fitting room. That’s when he felt a sharp pain in his palm at the base of the thumb. He looked at his hand and blood was trickling down.
He gave the jeans to his girlfriend, a nurse, who pulled a needle-fitted syringe out of the pocket. There appeared to be blood inside.
They looked at each other in bewilderment.
“Then was anger, rage,” Beaudette said of his immediate reaction.
Following the May 2 incident, Beaudette has lived a tight knot of anxiety and doubt, all the while his guts were churning and his head pounding from the anti-HIV medication he had to take.
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Should hiding HIV status always be a crime?
Canadians living with HIV should not face jail time for keeping their medical condition from sexual partners if the risk of transmission is low or if they use condoms while having sex, civil liberties advocates say.
Criminal prosecution should be reserved for those who intentionally infect others, they add while asking the Supreme Court of Canada to define the meaning of “significant risk of harm” and compel its use as a standard in determining whether to prosecute people (using Criminal Code provisions such as aggravated sexual assault) who fail to disclose their HIV-positive status to sexual partners.
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A Changing Landscape in Fighting AIDS - Scientist and Community Leaders Look Ahead in 2012
This summer, more than 25,000 leading scientists, public health experts, policy-makers, community members, and experts in the HIV/AIDS field from around the world will gather in our nation's capital for the International AIDS Society's XIX International AIDS Conference. This gathering provides a vital platform to address the global response to HIV/AIDS and the efforts to overcome barriers that limit access to care, services, prevention tools, and research. In the last three decades, about 30 million people worldwide have died as a result of HIV/AIDS and each year, ~50,000 Americans still become infected. Despite this, because of the remarkable progress scientists and communities have made working together, we can now begin looking ahead with hopeful expectation to an AIDS-free generation.
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India's shunned transgenders struggle to survive
(Reuters) - Seema, a husband and father of two, gets ready for another night of work on the streets of the Indian capital, placing two halves of a yellow sponge ball into empty bra cups.
The 33-year-old then plucks out the stubble on his chin, applies foundation from a pink heart-shaped make-up box and combs his chin-length black hair in front of a large mirror.
Seema is transgender, one of hundreds of thousands in conservative India who are ostracized, often abused and forced into prostitution due to no legal recognition, even as the world marks International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia on May 17.
"It's necessary for me to do sex work because I have to look after my family," Seema said, adjusting a deep red scarf. "Nobody does it of their own wish. We have sex because we have no other choice."
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Grandmothers stand united in Canada and Africa
In many parts of Africa, when a person gets old their children become their sole means of support.
For many of these seniors however, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has not only robbed them of their children, but also left them in a position where they must care for their orphaned grandchildren.
Oakville grandmothers groups, who are fighting to support these African grandmothers, heard all about this predicament at The Kensington retirement residence Thursday in a presentation by ROTOM (Reach One Touch One Ministries) Director and Founder Kenneth Mugayehwenkyi of Uganda.
It was part of the launch party for Halton’s Stride to Turn the Tide Walk, an annual fundraiser for the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which will take place here June 9.
Those at Mugayehwenkyi’s presentation also heard about how just a few dedicated people can make a real difference in the lives of many.
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National News: International AIDS Vaccine Day
More than 34 million people around the world suffer with HIV and AIDS―95 percent of them in developing countries.
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