State of Canadian funding for HIV/AIDS is dismal

In the wake of Montreal hosting the International AIDS Conference, questions are being asked about just how committed Canada is to tackling the issue at home. Funds have been frozen since 2008, and HIV infections have risen in Canada by 25 percent between 2014 and 2018, when they should be decreasing.

I reached out to Gary Lacasse, executive director of the Canadian AIDS Society, to get a sense of where things are at in Canada when it comes to funding and programming, and the news was, unfortunately, not encouraging.

“We haven’t had any increase in funding since 2008, specifically for HIV,” Lecasse says. “We’re still dumbfounded, after so many closures, after so many re-orientations of funds, that they haven’t tied into the experience that when you fund programs that are holistic, that take care of the whole of the problem and not just specific parts of it, you do see decreases in HIV cases as we were seeing continuously until [2014], when rates started going up.”

In 2019, the federal government aligned their programs to a prevention-only model under their pan-Canadian Sexually Transmitted and Blood-Borne Infection (STBBI) framework, but didn’t attach any new funding to that framework. The framework has a 2030 target of reducing infections at a time where some sexually -transmitted infections have been rising precipitously, notably syphilis, but also gonorrhea and chlamydia.

This article was written by Dale Smith for xtra. Please click HERE to read the full article.