Thunder Bay health unit hopes to stave off potential spike in HIV infection

Health officials in Thunder Bay assembled representatives from more than 40 agencies Wednesday to discuss howto prevent the region's HIV infection rate from spiking.

Some parts of Canada, such as Saskatchewan and London, Ont., whichhave similar risk factors to those seen in the northwestern Ontario city, have seen infection rates rise, said Robin Cooper, the health promotion planner for the Thunder Bay District Health Unit.

"We have very high rates of hepatitis C in Thunder Bay. We also have very high rates of sexually transmitted infections, so that suggests some of the risk factors, like injection drug use andunsafe sex practices,that could potentially lead to an increase in HIV," Cooper explained.

The fact that other communities, where similar high-risk behaviours are prevalent, are seeing an increase in infection rates prompted the health unit to be proactive in hopes of figuring out how to avoid a similar problem, she said.

New tool to aid prevention

Cooper could only speculate as to why rates are rising when the same high-risk behaviours have existed since the startof the HIV epidemic.

"We also are seeing things like people moving around a lot more, so people moving community to community, so that could potentially put us at risk," she said.

While many HIV prevention strategies, such as harm-reduction, are well-established, one recent development is the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), among men who have sex with men.

PrEP isan anti-retroviral medication that HIV-negative men can take prior to HIV exposure which thenreduces their risk of infection.

"It was identified when we talked to our stakeholders that it isn't widely available in Thunder Bay," Cooper said. "So that might be something new that we can talk about and explore how we can get the government to pay for it, and how we can get providers to prescribe it."

The health unitplans to produce a new strategy for HIV prevention in the next eight to twelve months, Cooper said.