HIV and AIDS cases in Canada slowly continue to rise, a fact that both
alarms activists and offers some hope to doctors watching over the
disease.
Dr. Frank Plummer, head of the federal government's Centre for
Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, says the increase is due,
in part, to the swelling numbers of infected people who are staying
alive while taking new medication that fights the disease.
"HIV treatments have substantially improved the survival of those
living with HIV," Plummer says. "Morbidity has gone down
significantly. These drugs are really lifesavers."
But activists living with HIV have a vastly different reaction.
Louise Binder says the drugs that extend lives can also force people
to endure some side effects so debilitating that some suffer from
severe depression, commit suicide or die from kidney or liver failure.
"We don't have the same length of life as our peers and we still don't
have the quality of life. Nowhere near it," Binder says.
Medication often causes problems such as intense nausea, fatigue,
damaged internal organs, deeply sunken cheeks and large fat deposits
on the back that resemble a buffalo's hump (called lipodystrophy).
"This is a prevention message," says Binder, a spokesperson for Voices
of Positive Women. "Don't get the feeling that you can be as careless
as you want to, and pop these pills and it will all be dandy. Taking
these drugs is no picnic."
She says the side effects from her new medication have been so bad
that she told her doctor she won't stay on it — even though she is
aware there are few options. "I said `No ... I don't want to live this
way.'"
Canada's most recent figures — for 2003 — show that 440 people died of
HIV/AIDS that year. Ten years earlier, in 1993, 1,564 people died.
The numbers dropped significantly after 1996, when AIDS activists say
new drugs were introduced.
Yesterday, the Public Health Agency of Canada released its new figures
on the prevalence of the disease in Canada.
"The number of Canadians living with the HIV infection will likely
increase in the years to come as new infections continue and the
survival rates improve," says Plummer.
The numbers showed:
There are 58,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in Canada compared to
50,000 when figures were last released in 2002.
In 2005, there were 2,300 to 4,500 new infections, slightly higher than in 2002.
Over half of all people in Canada living with HIV are men who have sex
with other men.
Women made up 27 per cent of new infections in 2005, compared to 24
per cent in 2002.
The infection rate of aboriginal people is nearly three times higher
than that of other Canadians.
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