Today is World AIDS Day

I just wanted to bring to everyone’s awareness that December 1st every year is World AIDS Day. It is traditional on this day to wear something red, so that we might raise awareness without saying a word. Well, I arrived at work today and realized I had totally forgotten to wear red, so I am writing this post as a potentially even more effective way of raising awareness. Take some time to peruse some AIDS-related websites, specifically The Mountain Movement and the official World AIDS Day site, chat about the topic with your colleague and friends, and plan to wear red next year if you missed the boat this year.

World AIDS Day is December 1st

2010 Olympics: Hiding the Homeless

Considering my lack of time to write right now, I thought I’d post this and let you think about it for awhile! All I’ll say is this: Let’s keep our values straight when it comes to the 2010 Olympics. What are we really celebrating? If it’s equality, as the IOC promotes, than is this what we’re really going for? In the past, governments of the Olympic host countries have put up walls, literally, and relocated slumdwellers to build Olympic buildings (I heard that Beijing relocated 350,000 slumdwellers both to ‘clean-up’ and make space for contruction.) What will Canada do to reach out to those who have less, and suffer because of it?

B.C. homeless relocation questioned
Two days after B.C.’s Premier was grilled by Chinese media about the homeless problem in the province leading up to the 2010 Olympic Games – police have shut down a tent city in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

Homeless people living in Vancouver?s Oppenheimer Park are being relocated to area hotels.

 

Wednesday night police told the homeless to go to new homes arranged by the provincial government.

“It was very simple…we all got rooms” said Zippy, who has lived in a homeless camp in Oppenheimer Park for two months. “I (have) been living outside for 17 years so it’s going to be hard to live inside.”

Vancouver Police spokesperson Jana McGuinness says that all 40 people of the people they approached accepted the offer of new housing.

Some are suspicious of the timing of this goodwill gesture towards Vancouver’s homeless.

“I think Gordon Campbell got embarrassed in Beijing for the homeless situation here,” said Vancouver Park Board official Spencer Herbert.

“I’m hoping the suites aren’t full of bedbugs, as many of the suites currently are,” said Herbert.

During a news conference Tuesday in Beijing the B.C. premier faced tough questions about the province’s homeless problem.

Only two days later the order came down: open B.C. Housing and clear the park.

But not all tenters got the opportunity to get a fresh start.

“That’s bull. I’ve been on a waiting list for six months,” said Joseph Lalonde, who lives in the park.

“I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight. I’m going to walk around tonight until I find a place to go.”

Vancouver’s Oppenheimer Park has long been a point of contention for housing advocates and area residents alike.

In July, residents living around the park rallied to protect those who regularly sleep in the park out of concern homeless people were being ticketed and even threatened by police for using the park as a shelter.

Housing advocates say Thursday’s relocation is a step in the right direction, but there are still many questions unanswered as to how to put roofs over the heads of the city’s 1,200 homeless leading up to the 2010 games.

With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Jon Woodward.

Article originally from here.

Race for Dignity

I just wanted to bring to everyone’s attention the Race for Dignity going on July 5th, 2008!

The Race for Dignity Challenge is a spin-a-thon to raise funds for people affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa. The proceeds go to Dignitas International, a medical humanitarian organization that each month in Malawi, Africa:

• Starts hundreds of people on life-saving ARV medications
• Tests thousands for HIV
• Reaches thousands with HIV prevention knowledge

My friend, Rachel Slater, is biking for the cause – if you know her or if you don’t, consider sponsoring her efforts! To do so, click here.

For more information, please go to the Dignitas International website.

Now You Know 3: Harm Reduction

It has been awhile since I wrote a “Now You Know” entry, but a recent article in The Ottawa Citizen (Wednesday, March 5, 2008 – A4) inspired me to write about a topic that is both controversial, and easy to overlook. It is also one that you might be surprised to see me writing about.

The United Nations drug control board came down hard on the Canadian Government in order to encourage it to shut down safe injection sites for drug users in Canada. Claiming that these sites ‘enable illicit use,’ the UN is also accusing Canada of a lack of compliance with a number of international anti-drug treaties.

Coming ‘clean’ is not as simple as just stopping regular injections. Drug addicts deal with serious effects of withdrawal. Within just six to eight hours of their last injection, for instance, heroin addicts will start to feel the symptoms of withdrawl, which can include tremors, panic, cramps, vomiting, insomnia, shaking, and irritability. The symptoms can be debilatating, leading to other obvious issues such as an inability to work or focus, and isolation from relationships, which are major roadblocks to quitting altogether. Moreover, in Canada, a significant portion of HIV transmission occurs through needle-sharing. In prisons, make-shift needles are made out of pens, paperclips and old syringes. These needles can be used by dozens of inmates, a hundred times each, without being cleaned at all. A drug user might also overdose. If the drugs are taken in the street, unsupervised and far from medical attention, an overdose is almost sure to be fatal.

One of the best solutions in the grand scheme of things is to reduce harm to drug users by providing safe spaces for them to inject, as well as clean, unused needles. One such program is Insite, a Supervised Injection Site located in Downtown East Side Vancouver, an area in Canada notorious for issues associated with drug use, HIV, poverty, and abuse. Being the first site of its kind in North America, Insite has been a hub of controversy over such sites, as well as a leader in the field of harm reduction.

While it is easy to say that creating spaces for drug injection encourages drug use, results are proving just the opposite. In fact, research conducted on Insite shows that it is leading to an increase in detox and addiction treatment, has reduced the number of people injecting in public spaces, is attracting the highest-risk users, has reduced needle-sharing, is disseminating information on safer injecting to at least 1/3 of its users, and has not increased the rates of relapse among former drug users or those seeking to quit nor increased the rate of drug-related crime (source). (See also Saving Lives.)

Psycho-social issues are incredibly complex. There is always an entanglement of one issue into the next, and it is impossible to compartmentalize them and deal with them individually. Approaching the issues in this way will only perpetuate them. Harm Reduction may not be the ideal, but it is the most realistic approach.

Shutting the doors of drug injection sites will not put an end to illicit drug use. Instead, it will put an end to the lives of more and more users before they even have the chance to stop their dependence on drugs.

Insite is saving lives.

For more information, please visit these sites:

Insite- Supervised Injection Site (Vancouver, Canada)
Insite- Supervised Injection Site (Research Results)
HIV in Canada
Drug Use and Offending in Canada

© Meghan J. Ward, 2008