Grant to help U of M researchers study HIV care

Winnipeg Free Press

2 days ago

A team of researchers has been awarded nearly $3 million in federal funding to research Manitoba-made ways to to improve HIV care as diagnosis rates continue to skyrocket.
Manitoba's rate of new HIV diagnoses is second only to Saskatchewan in all of Canada.
In 2023, Manitoba's diagnosis rate was 19.3 per 100,000 residents, while the national average was just over six per 100,000 residents.
Last year, 280 Manitobans were diagnosed with HIV compared with 199 in 2022 — a 41 per cent increase — despite HIV being highly preventable.
Manitoba's cases are unique in Canada: more women than men were diagnosed in 2022 and 2023, nearly half of women and 29 per cent of men diagnosed were homeless, and a majority reported a barrier such as mental health issues or drug use.
University of Manitoba researcher Zulma Rueda and her team will use $2.75 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to study the gaps in care in Manitoba.
'In this case, the challenge is that this is not just a medical problem. We have excellent HIV treatment, we have excellent HIV-prevention treatments available, we have excellent testing,' Rueda said Monday. 'In addition to those resources, we need wrap-around services and social services.'
Researchers will work with community groups, including the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Centre, Siloam Mission and the Manitoba HIV Program to connect with the people they serve.
'This disease has a different presentation in different contexts, so it's not the same in Vancouver (and) it's not the same in Toronto. Understanding how it affects and which populations are affected, organizations can design tailored strategies to serve the most affected communities,' Rueda said.
Research nurse Maya Sykes has been offering primary care at Siloam Mission's Princess Street clinic over the past year, and will be part of the upcoming project, which is set to begin later this year.
'My role over this past year has been to kind of build those relationships with community, because a lot of our folks have a lot of previous trauma or negative experiences with the health care system and with health care workers,' she said.
She and others in the U of M infectious disease department will begin with community consultation to paint a picture of how people in Manitoba contract HIV, what might stop them from accessing treatment, and how they can be connected to continuing medical care.
'Just in the conversations that I've had with people, some might know their HIV status, but some might not know what that next step is,' she said.
'Do I get treatment? How do I get treatment? What do I do? I don't have a safe place to store my medication, for example, or I'm living in an encampment. There's just a lot of other competing factors.'
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Sykes believes diagnosis rates under-represent the true spread of HIV in the province.
'I think that the research, it's unfortunately going to be staggering,' she said.
'Because I think a lot of the folks that we see here might not have ever been connected to the health care system in Manitoba.'
In 2023, 100,463 people were tested for HIV; out of those tests, 0.6 per cent were positive.
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Malak AbasReporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg's North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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