Skip to content

BRHA recognizes World AIDS Day

The 21st anniversary of World AIDS Day was recognized by the Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) and the Safer Choices Northern Network (SCNN) with the third local awareness walk in Thompson's downtown area on Dec. 1.

The 21st anniversary of World AIDS Day was recognized by the Burntwood Regional Health Authority (BRHA) and the Safer Choices Northern Network (SCNN) with the third local awareness walk in Thompson's downtown area on Dec. 1.

The walk, which over 20 people took part in, aimed to bring awareness to the issue and eliminate the stigma that people might have when discussing HIV and AIDS. Currently, it is estimated that around 63,000 Canadians are living with HIV, while 2,300 to 4,500 more people are infected each year.

Blake Ellis, communications co-ordinator with the BRHA, says HIV and AIDS are most prevalent in communities with poor social economic factors, including many Canadian aboriginal communities, which represent about 7.5 per cent of all Canadians living with HIV in 2007. Aboriginal people in Canada made up just over 23 per cent of new HIV infections in 2006, a figure that is 2.8 times higher than the infection rate for non-aboriginal people. In the BRHA, the rates of sexually transmitted infections per capita compared to any other region in the province are five to six times higher.

SCNN and the BRHA have been campaigning for safe sex and AIDS awareness recently, with SCNN handing out over 1,000 condoms around Thompson on Nov. 27.

More than a quarter of a century after Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first identified in North America in June 1981, Thompson had its first World AIDS Day walk on Dec. 1, 2007 - an event that has existed internationally since 1988.

The concept of World AIDS Day originated at the World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programs for AIDS Prevention.

From its inception until 2004, UNAIDS spearheaded the World AIDS Day campaign, choosing annual themes in consultation with other global health organizations. In 2005 this responsibility was turned over to World AIDS Campaign (WAC), who chose Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise as the main theme for World AIDS Day.

The Northern Aids Initiative Inc., originally started out as the Thompson AIDS Project, initiated by Healthy Thompson in 1994 as a result of community concerns.

Scientists now widely believe that chimpanzees, with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), living in dense African jungles in Cameroon in the 1930s were the probable source of the HIV virus which caused the human AIDS pandemic through local cross-species transmission in Cameroon and later spread to the Congo.

From Africa, HIV spread to Haiti around 1966 and then spread to the United States and much of the rest of the world beginning around 1969, many scientists now believe.

Two species of HIV can infect humans-HIV-1 and HIV-2. The former is more virulent, more easily transmitted, and accounts for most global HIV infections. HIV-2 is less infectious and is largely confined to parts of Western Africa.

Based on differences in one of the nine genes that make up the virus, HIV-1 is placed in three major groups. The most prevalent, Group M, has eight geographically distinct subtypes.

For 12 years between 1969 and June 1981, AIDS was unidentified in North America. On June 5, 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta published an article, "Pneumocystis Pneumonia-Los Angeles," in the agency's weekly newsletter, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which became the first published report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

push icon
Be the first to read breaking stories. Enable push notifications on your device. Disable anytime.
No thanks