Sarah Leamon: Despite what Stephen Harper says, supervised injection sites make a difference

published on July 29, 2015 by Sarah Leamon, in Straight

Earlier this month, Vancouver played host to the eighth annual International HIV/AIDS Conference, bringing the world’s top experts, scientists, doctors, and community planners together and putting the city under a microscope.

A prestigious opportunity for the city, this conference offers much more than that. It offers the opportunity for leading professionals in the global response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic to gather, share scientific research and developments, and explore realistic mechanisms to move forward.

But this is not the first time that our city has been recognized for its contributions in the fight against HIV/AIDS—far from it in fact. Vancouver has long been recognized as a world leader in HIV/AIDS research and policy. In 1996, Dr. Julio Montaner and his team at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, which is housed at St. Paul’s Hospital, pioneered an innovative antiretroviral therapy that is still being used today. Over the years, we have received a number of accolades for progressive treatments and policies to deal with HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.

Aside from clinical advances, Vancouver has also garnered a great deal of international attention for its rather prolific supervised injection site, which is aptly named Insite and located in the Downtown East Side.

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Julio Montaner

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

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Sarah Leamon: Despite what Stephen Harper says, supervised injection sites make a difference

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