1981: Doctors in the U.S. begin reporting abnormally high rates of rare forms of pneumonia and cancer in young, gay men.
Le Comité sida aide Montréal (CSAM) is formed from a working group called ARMS that is funded by the Quebec Government with a triple mandate of prevention, advocacy, and care.
According to Gary Kinsman, the first AIDS activist action in Canada was held in front of the British Columbia Legislature in Victoria.
[4][5][6] 1987: Vancouver activist Kevin Brown, a founder of the Positive Living Society of British Columbia, lobbies the federal government for access to the anti-retroviral drug, AZT.
Bill 34 is introduced in the parliament of British Columbia, which granted the government the power to quarantine individuals affected with HIV/AIDS and isolate them in a region.
[7][8][9][10][11] 1989: The lack of a coordinated government response prompted numerous Canadians, along with members of ACT UP NYC, to participate in the highly publicized demonstrations at the Fifth International AIDS Conference in Montreal in June.
During the conference, Perrin Beatty, the newly appointed federal Minister of Health and Welfare, acknowledged the absence of a national AIDS plan in Canada.
[13] Since its creation CAAN has performed advocacy, engaged in research, and provided community based services with the goal of helping Canadian Indigenous people with HIV/AIDS.
2000: The United Nations Secretary-General creates the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria 2001: The National Aboriginal Council on HIV/AIDS is established to identify and address shared Indigenous community and Public Health Agency of Canada priorities and provide advice informed by community knowledge, lived experience and relevant practice specific to the needs of Indigenous peoples.
The first officially sanctioned supervised injection site in North America opens in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
The Quebec Ministry of Health adopts a consensus statement on viral load and HIV transmission risk developed to inform the delivery of risk-reduction counseling.
2016: Health Canada approves the use of daily oral Truvada for use as PrEP to reduce the risk of sexual transmission of HIV.
2018: PHAC releases “Reducing the health impact of sexually transmitted and blood borne infections in Canada by 2030: A pan-Canadian STBBI framework for action”, which provides a roadmap for collaborative and complementary actions to reduce the impact of STBBIs in Canada and supports and contributes the achievement of global STBBI targets.
[19] Section 22 of the Health Protection and Promotion Act states that a medical officer “...may require a person to take or to refrain from taking any action that is specified in the order in respect of a communicable disease.”[20] This caused fear, as the threat was that the Medical Officer could remand someone who is deemed to be putting other people at risk, namely HIV-positive patients.
Ian Gemmill, the Associate Medical Officer of Health in Ottawa, was responsible for all of the Section 22 orders in the city.
Ottawa had a disproportionately large representation of Section 22s, with thirty-seven orders in the city compared to the four from the rest of Ontario.
[23] This study also looked at heterosexual contact among those born in Canada or in a country no on the HIV-endemic list and found that this group represented 17.6% of the population.
They also found that heterosexual contact among people born in a country where HIV is endemic was 15% of the total population of individuals affected.
When discussing the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Canada it is important to take into account these factors and the role that they play in supporting individuals affected.
[25] This money went towards supporting a thriving community of researchers, people living with HIV and their caregivers, health advocates, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to generate knowledge about prevention, treatment, management, and a cure for HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.
Acknowledging the unique risk factors that Indigenous people face is important but the unequal access to care is also a crucial determinant in their susceptibility to health problems.
It is important to understand the colonial framework that the Federal Government has been based upon and how this influences the approaches when dealing with issues involving Indigenous peoples.
It is important to note that the idea that AIDS had begun in Africa, and specifically affected Haitians as well as Black people, was growing and spreading.
These community outreaches were essential in giving black people living with HIV/AIDS a safe space to discuss their experience and break the barriers in their society that they were facing.