HIV rate soars among Vancouver's native drug users

Startling new research reveals that aboriginal drug users living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside are contracting HIV-AIDS at twice the rate of non-aboriginal users.

Over the four-year study, 18.5 per cent of aboriginal men and women who injected such drugs as cocaine and heroin became HIV-positive, compared with 9.5 per cent of non-aboriginal intravenous drug users.

"This is a tragedy," Evan Wood, a research scientist at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said in an interview. "Many people in the aboriginal community are reaching out for care and the care isn't there."

Dr. Wood, the lead author of the research, said the higher rates of infection among natives are not due to biological factors but rather to patterns of social networking: The fact that aboriginal people interact principally with other aboriginals heightens their exposure and speeds the spread of HIV-AIDS.

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