Coalition supports people with HIV and Hepatitis C

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Within the first few minutes of meeting Ken Ward, one learns that he is a well-loved and respected individual. During the course of a half-hour interview, there were no fewer than seven interruptions by people wanting to exchange greetings, offer a handshake or share a story.

Ward takes it all in stride, and it is his love of the people that has brought him to Prince Albert to fight for a cause that many in the community would rather soon forget about.

Ward is the co-ordinator and the driving force behind the Saskatchewan North Spirit of the Heart Coalition for Harm Reduction. The coalition's mission is to gather community members, organizations and leaders to work together in organizing support for people who have contracted blood-borne viruses such as Hepatitis C and HIV. The coalition will work to assist people who have these diseases, and to raise community awareness and understanding of both the diseases and the people who have contracted them.

Ward chose Prince Albert for this program for several reasons.

"I realized that Prince Albert truly is the gateway to the North," he said, "and that there is a large population of intravenous drug users here for a city its size. Many of the users are coming and going to and from northern communities, and they are taking drugs with them. Isolated communities in the North are now discovering IV (intravenous) drug use in their communities where there was none before."

While this may seem shocking to some, the numbers paint a bleak picture of the toll that IV drug use is taking. The number of confirmed cases of Hepatitis C in Prince Albert is growing by approximately 150 cases a year, and Ward feels that certain attitudes and situations are the result.

"In Saskatchewan, many people, including the government, will not recognize and accept the fact that there is a serious problem occurring here," he said, adding that the denial has meant projects such as the coalition have had to struggle to access funding, and many have fallen by the wayside as a result.

"Those who work in this field are too busy trying to find support to survive, let alone deal with the issue," he said.

In the early 1990s, Ward became the first Aboriginal person to come forward and say that he was HIV positive. Since then, he has been a public speaker and crusader for HIV and AIDS awareness.

Ward feels that the task of acknowledging, accepting and educating about disease, prevention, and healing is the responsibility of the community, and that recognition that there is a problem is the first step. And he feels that Prince Albert is in a unique position to take that step.

"At first, I was overwhelmed with what I saw. Prince Albert is a community of 40,000 people, and it is a place with big city issues and small town attitudes. There is a serious situation where we have prostitution, cheaper drugs, and a constant movement of people in and out of the North. If we don't address these issues at the grassroots level, our biggest fear is that the number of new diagnoses (for Hepatitis C and HIV) will triple very shortly," he said.

"Communities are in denial, and acknowledging the problem is the first step in mobilizing people to set up a model of what will work in their communities."

Another issue that Ward feels is contributing to the increase in the numbers is a rise in the abuse on the street of pharmaceutical drugs such as methadone and dilaudid.

"People are using people, and it can be as simple as a mother selling drugs to pay for food for her children. Also, many people are taking other drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, for the fact that it will show up in a urine test and they can be placed on the methadone program."

Ward hopes the coalition will succeed in the community better than other programs by taking a long-term approach to the problem. "Harm reduction does not mean only between the hours of 9 to 5," Ward said. "We need full-time commitment and continuity. The government only provides hort-term funding for programs such as this. The coalition needs to take responsibility of this issue."

Ward said at least five years of continuous work in the North will show results. The biggest step will be providing harm reduction by strengthening families.

"When we have healthy families we have healthy communities. In certain communities, large groups of teenagers will group together at one house rather than at home. Why is that? They need a place to feel safe. However, it is at these houses that drug use occurs regularly. We need the families back and we need the communities to unite and say 'Drugs aren't welcome here anymore.' You will then see the numbers of new cases go down."

What is desperately needed, Ward said, is education on blood-borne diseases and prevention. Recently, when he asked a group of 18 nursing students to raise their hands if they had attended any type of seminar or class on blood-borne diseases, only three students raised their hands.

Through the Spirit of the Heart Coalition for Harm Reduction, Ward hopes to bring the community information and the tools needed to help spread the message and stop the spread of Hepatitis C and HIV.

For more information on the Saskatchewan North Spirit of the Heart Coalition for Harm Reduction, please contact Ken Ward at 764-3431, by fax at 765-6543, and by mail at 1409, 1st Avenue East, Prince Albert SK S6V-2B2.