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features
October 4, 2021 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Infectious Diseases During COVID-19
Eve Cable| Illustrations Editor Emma Hebert Features Editor
Since the initial outbreaks of COVID-19, the majority of Canadian medical personnel have been focused on tackling testing, contact tracing, and treatment related to the pandemic. Among these medical personnel are doctors and nurses who under normal circumstances treat patients with other infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis C, chlamydia, and syphilis. Due to this diversion in personnel, access to testing and preventative/earlyintervention care measures for other infectious diseases have been extremely limited; “When you look across the country, the anecdotal evidence is that [HIV] testing is almost nonexistent,” said Gary Lacasse, executive director of the Canadian AIDS Society. He pointed to issues in both
the availability of HIV and other infectious disease testing, as well as the official tracking of testing and early-prevention measures. It’s essential to note here that it didn’t have to be this way – if the Canadian government had prioritized stricter lockdown measures and curbed the initial spread of COVID-19 from the outset of the pandemic, the public healthcare system would be much better equipped to treat other infectious diseases while also monitoring the spread of COVID-19. Even though the state of public health since the onset of the pandemic means that resources have been stretched thin, this is not an excuse for the erasure of these diseases and those who live with them. Rather, it is our responsibility to ensure that our government’s strategies for continuing
to address COVID-19 adequately accommodate those living with other infectious diseases. The fight for HIV and other infectious disease treatment is an ongoing one. In 2016, Canada committed to achieving three key targets aimed toward the elimination of HIV as a public health threat by 2030: 1. diagnosing 90 per cent of people with HIV; 2. treating 90 per cent of those diagnosed; 3. a 90 per cent success rate of suppressing the virus to undetectable levels in those treated. Supervised consumption sites, HIV prevention clinics, and counselling services have all been cornerstones to Canada’s strategy to combat the spread of other infectious diseases, yet all of these have taken a hit from
represent 5 reallocation of resources people per cent of Canada’s due to COVID-19. population, they account for approximately 11.3 Existing structural per cent of new HIV inequities in the treatment of infectious cases reported in Canada. Colonialism, racism, social diseases It’s important to recognize exclusion, and suppression self-determination the disproportionate of impact that these have all been identified infectious diseases have on as determinants that have Indigenous communities that already influenced receive a significantly health and increase the risk lower standard of care from of contracting HIV. Within this, lack of culturally the public health system. Intravenous drug use safe care – meaning care contributes to the spread of that is compatible with HIV and other infectious Indigenous structures of diseases, for example, knowledge and allows self-determination through needle sharing. for Since those struggling – presents a structural with addiction or who are barrier to Indigenous attempting to homeless are statistically people more likely to take drugs access HIV treatment. intravenously, they are Structural inequalities put at a higher risk. such as poverty, stigma, and Indigenous communities homelessness, public are also disproportionately inequitable access have vulnerable to a rise in health exacerbated by infectious disease; pre- been COVID-19 counts report the pandemic. As many face job that although Indigenous Canadians
