Pubdate: Wed, 10 Aug 2005
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2005, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Petti Fong
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?143 (Hepatitis)

PRINCE GEORGE PONDERS INJECTION CENTRE

VANCOUVER -- Frightened by the prospect of an HIV infection epidemic rate 
as high as Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Prince George is considering 
opening the second North American supervised injection site in its downtown 
core.

The rate of HIV infections in Prince George is already similar to the 
numbers from the notorious Vancouver neighbourhood in the 1990s, prompting 
community health officials to propose opening an injection site similar to 
Vancouver's.

"The fact we have faced is, there is the potential for something quite 
disastrous to be happening here," said Murry Krause, executive director of 
the Central Interior Native Health Society. "We're concerned this is 
actually a shoulder before it actually spikes and we are noticing this 
because it's too dramatic to ignore."

Mr. Krause, who is also a city councillor, said Prince George, like 
Vancouver, is a hub for smaller communities and one of the major issues the 
city faces is a transient population.

Vancouver opened its site in 2003.

In May, researchers from the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS 
recruited 300 aboriginal youth in Prince George and 300 in Vancouver to 
study specific aboriginal health issues. Rates of hepatitis C in both 
groups were around 60 per cent. HIV infection rates in Prince George were 
at 4.2 per cent while Vancouver's group was at 12.3 per cent.

The higher hepatitis C levels and cocaine injection rates in Prince George 
indicates the health authority in the north could be on the cusp of a 
public health crisis.

Less than five years ago, there may have been one or two HIV-related deaths 
a year in Prince George. But there are now one or two a month, according to 
Carlene Dingwall, executive director of Positive Living North, a support 
organization for people with HIV/AIDS.

"We need to act right now because all the data, the high hep C rates and 
the increasing HIV infection rates show we're poised to have a major 
outbreak comparable to Africa," she said yesterday.

Prince George is fed by four major highways and is a destination point for 
nearly 53 reserve communities in the north. In some cases, said Ms. 
Dingwall, native youth in small communities travel to Prince George where 
they can engage in injection drug use or experiment with crystal meth, 
before returning to their community, where there few health services are 
available.

However, Ms. Dingwall said, she's not convinced a supervised isite is the 
right strategy now for Prince George. A better solution is more funding for 
education programs and support services, she said.

A bigger opponent to an injection site is the RCMP. Recently, an RCMP 
officer told a local reporter a supervised injection site could revitalize 
the downtown core.

But a spokesman said yesterday that the constable made the comments based 
on his personal beliefs. Constable Mike Caira said a supervised injection 
site does not have the backing of the RCMP.

"We can't offer any support to it because it will then lend some 
credibility to the use of drugs."

A supervised injection site alone will not solve the problem of rising HIV 
rates but is one potential solution among many that must be pulled 
together, said Lorna Medd, medical health officer for the Northern Health 
Authority.

In Prince George, community nurses are noticing patterns and changes that 
echo the situation in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside when HIV rates suddenly 
spiked to 40 per cent from the norm of 3 per cent in a period of 18 months.

Dr. Medd said that initially, she believed the increases that public health 
nurses were forewarning her of were the result of a backlog from testing. 
But a number of snapshots that come up with the same information have 
convinced her that there is a sharp and rising increase in the number of 
HIV infections.

"The community is small enough that we are aware there is a break in 
patterns, there is increased sharing of needles, increased use of cocaine. 
There's now no question about it," Dr. Medd said.
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MAP posted-by: Beth