Repurposing the dedicated AIDS ward at St. Paul’s Hospital is as much a milestone on the eternal road to greater tolerance and understanding as it is the marker for a triumph of modern medicine in the face of a viral scourge that once engendered a sense of hopelessness.
From the climate of fear, ignorance, bigotry – and often despair – that greeted the emergence of a cruel and deadly new affliction 35 years ago, we’ve all progressed mightily towards compassion, understanding, knowledge and community support that leaves the virus, if not eliminated, at least under control and much diminished.
To be fair, although the courageous and pioneering work at St. Paul’s deserves great praise for its leadership role in the face of a difficult, often irrational and ideologically motivated opposition, it also represents a bigger attempt to address the issue by Vancouver, its public health institutions, community outreach workers, public activists in the gay community, civic and provincial politicians, educators and the citizens themselves.
It’s difficult now, more than a generation after the first AIDS cases were identified, to recall how the disease was perceived by some as granting permission to demonize its victims as immoral objects of divine retribution; as being personally responsible for their condition; and as threats to society worthy of ostracism, compulsory quarantine or even criminalization. Small surprise, then, that in its early stages, St. Paul’s felt it necessary to identify its dedicated AIDS ward by a code name, Ward 10.
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But as Dr. Julio Montaner, the director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV-AIDS, observed this week, the satisfaction that accompanies St. Paul’s AIDS ward putting itself out of work doesn’t mark a time for resting on laurels. Instead of a provincial celebration, this could – and should – be a national celebration. It is not. Instead, Montaner notes, we have a virulent new epidemic in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where 70 per cent and 40 per cent of new AIDS cases respectively are among First Nations citizens whose health care is largely the federal government’s fiduciary responsibility.
The Vancouver Sun
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