IT'S TIME TO CONFRONT HIV IN ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES

For almost a decade, front line health workers have been warning Canada's
aboriginal leaders to pay attention to HIV because their communities could
well be next to be hard hit by the virus. Already afflicted by poverty and
educational and nutritional deficiencies, many of these communities have a
disproportionate number of people at risk.

Aboriginal communities have a greater proportion of young people than do
other parts of Canada. And pregnancy rates among aboriginal teens indicate
that too much of their sexual activity is unprotected. One survey found
more than half the aboriginal respondents had unprotected sex in the
previous 12 months.

A greater proportion of aboriginals are in jail, thereby exposed to a
prison culture of intravenous drug use.

And a lot of young people are being lured from jobless reserves to the
city. Unfortunately, they tend to lack education and skills, and they can
too often wind up in places like the Downtown Eastside and be drawn into
high-risk behaviours like drug use or the sex trade.

Some will carry HIV infection back to small communities where leaders
delude themselves that the problem is an urban one.

Many First Nations leaders seem to prefer -- perhaps understandably -- to
focus on treaty negotiations, aboriginal rights, economic development and
politics rather than the distasteful subject of HIV.

As a result, many communities drift along unaware or in denial. One study
found that almost one in five aboriginal people surveyed had never even
heard of AIDS.

Federal statistics cited by the assembly show that while aboriginal people
comprise only three per cent of Canada's population, they account for five
per cent of HIV infections. And almost everyone acknowledges those numbers
are understated.

One researcher estimates that aboriginal people now represent 16 per cent
of new HIV infections. Of these, 45 per cent are thought to be women and 40
per cent of these women are under 30.

The same homophobic misconceptions, discomfort with the nature of the
disease and its transmission, fear and ignorance have contributed to
dangerous levels of denial in other societies, too.

Tragically, it is their own futures they've been denying.

By 1999, the United Nations agency concerned with the global pandemic was
reporting that this most opportunistic of viruses was shifting away from
the homosexual men who were its first victims to attack heterosexual women
and sexually active youth. It was estimated then that six new young people
were infected with HIV every minute of every day.

And now a study in the heart of Vancouver confirms that infection rates
continue to soar among some segments of the aboriginal population in the
Downtown Eastside. Aboriginal injection-drug users are contracting HIV at
twice the rate of non-aboriginal junkies.

Because Canada's aboriginal communities are widely dispersed and many are
isolated and remote, some First Nations leaders assume HIV is an urban
problem. That assumption gives them a false sense of security.

The mobility of young people between urban and rural communities, the
prevalence of unprotected sex, reluctance to discuss the problems posed by
some sexual behaviours -- all these factors mean no community is safe.

And the cost is not measured only in human suffering. At a lifetime
treatment cost of $153,000 for every patient with HIV, every 10 new
infections in the teenage population adds $1.5 million to the more than $36
billion they have already cost in Canada.

In the final analysis, responding to this fulminating epidemic is not about
differences between the aboriginal and the non-aboriginal community.

It's about the values we all hold in common. It's about our children and
the tomorrow they must share.

It's about empathy and it's about the intelligent application of that
compassion to finding solutions that work.

The best antidote to inertia is decisive action. The best antidote to
ignorance is education. The best antidote to denial is frank discussion.

And all Canadian leaders should remember every dollar spent preventing an
HIV infection will save hundreds of thousands that could be spent on
developing job skills and employment opportunities -- things that will
provide genuine economic security for young aboriginals and move them out
of the risk pool.