B.C. AIDS groups slam funding Last Updated Thu, 12 May 2005 16:26:00 EDT CBC News VANCOUVER - British Columbia AIDS groups on Thursday called for the provincial government to double funding as the disease spreads further among remote First Nations communities. * INDEPTH: AIDS Agencies have two and sometimes three times the number of AIDS patients to look after, compared to a decade earlier. But there have been no funding increases, claims the Pacific AIDS Network. PAN represents more than 50 HIV-AIDS community support and prevention agencies across the province. The province has budgeted $11.4 million a year to fight HIV-AIDS, Carlene Dingwall, executive director of care group Positive Living North, told CBC News Online. "The amount must be doubled and the percentage directed to groups outside the Lower Mainland � about four per cent now � must be increased," Dingwall said. PAN director Marcie Summers said the government had "no intention" of reaching goals set in 2003 to reduce infections and increase support for those living with HIV-AIDS. "Our funding has been flat for 10 years and that's unacceptable," Summers said. "There's no money to meet those goals, so it's pretty frustrating." The lack of funding also means poor education across the province for youth and adults to avoid HIV-AIDS, Dingwall said. "There is a health crisis in the North surrounding HIV not only for the youth, but the adult rate doubled in a year, from eight or nine new cases last year to 23 new cases this year." The province's northern health region stretches from Williams Lake to the Yukon border. The area contains 63 aboriginal communities and about 12 per cent of the provincial population. A study called the Cedar Project released on Thursday said two groups of 300 aboriginal injection-drug addicts, one in Vancouver's seedy Downtown Eastside and the other in the northern city of Prince George, showed alarming rates of hepabreastis C infections: 57.1 per cent and 62.4 per cent, respectively. "When we see really high hepabreastis C rates, it means that HIV is just on its heels," Dingwall said. She said lack of resources for the North means people may contract HIV while getting supplies in Prince George, but don't have access to testing facilities when they return to their remote communities. "They don't know they have it and they have no means to test for it," she said. ****** It appears that homoloveuals in the large canadian cities use up the supply of HIV-AIDS medicines and the money to buy additional meds. Thus knowingly and willfully depriving the canadian aboriginal population of much need HIV-AIDS drugs
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