For the first time ever, AIDS in Aboriginal populations will receive attention at an international AIDS conference being held in Washington, D.C.
A Saskatchewan AIDS organization says it is high time.
Margaret Poitras is the executive director of the All Nations Hope AIDS Network in Saskatchewan. She has been on the front line of helping Aboriginal people who become infected.
Poitras says Saskatchewan leads the nation when it comes to infections, with 200 new cases reported in 2009. Of those cases, 157 were Aboriginal people and most were women.
She says injection drug use is the major risk factor:
“What’s driving HIV in our population is addictions. So, we see two, three generations of families using needles together.”
Poitras says addictions stem from generations of abuse caused by the residential school experience, poverty, and unemployment. She says these social issues have to be addressed:
“They need to work alongside of us. They don’t need to be putting band-aids on our people. They need to help us take the band-aids off — get to the root causes.”
The international AIDS conference is being held next week. Twenty-thousand delegates — including scientists, researchers, politicians and community leaders — will be there to try to work out a global solution to the international problem.