Canada: Nightmare HIV Scenario for Aboriginals Unlikely

Public health officials have backed away from an earlier warning that compared HIV's spread among Saskatchewan's aboriginal community to the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa.

"If you think decimating the African population was bad ... HIV in this province will kill 15 to 30 percent [of the aboriginal population]" over five to 10 years, Dr. Khami Chokani, the medical health officer for Prince Albert Parkland Health Region, said recently. Chokani has work experience in Africa.

While there are similarities, the practical differences should be decisive in preventing a worst-case scenario, said Dr. Moira McKinnnon, the province's chief medical officer. "The epidemiology of HIV in Saskatchewan is different from sub-Saharan Africa," McKinnon said. "It involves a high level of intravenous drug use and it involves a different social norm around addiction. We are seeing whole families addicted. ..."

The Ministry of Health is working on an HIV prevention and treatment plan with regional health officials and the Metis and First Nations communities. The strategy includes expanding needle-exchange programs, boosting screening, and linking those infected to treatment and care.

"It is crucial and very important that as we go ahead with this [provincial] HIV strategy, that people do support us and do help us to address this problem," said Chokani. "We have seen that when the resources are not utilized in other places in the world there have been those kinds of numbers that we are seeing."

The number of new HIV infections in Saskatchewan virtually tripled from 2004 to 2007, Chokani said. Since 2002, eight babies have been born with HIV.

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