NATIVE DRUG USERS TWICE AS LIKELY TO ACQUIRE HIV

VANCOUVER -- Aboriginal injection drug users in Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside are becoming infected with HIV at almost twice the rate of their
non-aboriginal counterparts, says the co-author of a new study.

The study warns the soaring infection rate could turn HIV/AIDS into the
next big epidemic afflicting Canadian first nations people, Patricia
Spittal said yesterday.

The study began in 1996 with 1,400 injection drug users, of whom 941 were
HIV negative.

By 2001, 21.1 per cent of the aboriginal participants became HIV-positive,
compared with 12.7 per cent of non-aboriginal injection-drug users, said
Spittal, a medical anthropologist with the B.C. Centre for Excellence in
HIV/AIDS.

"There's no other indication of results like this in the world right now
among aboriginal people," said Spittal of the study that ended in 2001. It
will be published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The study also showed that first nations women using drugs are becoming
HIV-positive at twice the rate of non-aboriginal women who inject drugs,
she said. And first nations men become infected with the virus at double
the rate of non-aboriginal men who use injection drugs.

The study showed that first nations women who go on binges of injection
drug use are 2.6 times more likely to become HIV positive, compared with
aboriginal men, who were 1.4 times as likely to do so, Spittal said.

The alarming incidence of HIV infection among aboriginal injection drug
users indicates that HIV/AIDS could be the next epidemic facing Canada's
first nations, who have been historically marginalized and often seek to
numb their pain with drugs, Spittal said.