AIDS at 25

Most days, the Rogers Centre is a venue for football or baseball, but tonight planted squarely over home base, some of the world's HIV/AIDS leaders called for the end of stigma and discrimination and a renewed push in the development of new preventative medicines.

Missing from the group was Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, who conference co-chairman Mark Wainberg chided for his absence. Instead Tony Clement, Canada's Minister of Health, took to the stage. As he did hecklers raised hand-stenciled pillowcases in the air. "Renew Canada's only safe injection site," read the hundreds of homemade banners. "Sleep in Steve. HIV never sleeps. Time to deliver."

The banners were part of a grassroots effort organized by the Canadian Treatment Action Council, Tony Perrot, one of pillowcase hoisters told me. Last Friday night, with the help of friends and neighbors, the group stenciled, painted, dried and folded 1,000 pillowcases with their messages. Security issues prompted the move from placards to pillowcases, and made it easier for the activists to tuck their message into their pockets as they entered the stadium.

The safe-injection site, called Insite, has been operating in Vancouver, BC since September 2003. It is the only safe-injection site in North America. By comparison, there are nearly 50 in Europe. The site will close on September 12 if Minister Clement does not renew a three-and-a-half year exemption from Canada's narcotic law, which allows the site's 7,000 users to inject their own drugs in a clean and safe environment.

Rather than ban the behavior, the site tries to mitigate some of the harms associated wtih injection drug use, including HIV and hepititis infection, and overdose, and put injectors in contact with the public health system. Insite's presence in Vancouver has cut ambulance trips, hospital visits and deaths. Yet the principle on which it is based--harm reduction--remains highly polarized in some countries, the U.S. in particular.

"Mr. Harper, don't you understand that harm-reduction programs save lives?" Wainberg asked the absent PM. It will be interesting to see how he reacts to this tomorrow.