A Vancouver study of homelessness in its Downtown Eastside neighbourhood has revealed that the longer a person with HIV remains homeless the more likely he or she will have a more compromised immune system accompanied by greater health risks.
“Longer duration of homelessness was independently and negatively associated with the likelihood of exhibiting a non-detectable viral load,” say the study’s authors from the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver and the Division of AIDS, Department of Medicine, at the University of British Columbia.
Advances in HIV treatment over the past generation have drastically reduced the rates of HIV/AIDS-associated morbidity and mortality, at least among those who receive treatment.
Highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART has been successful to the point where health policies are now aiming to decrease the presence of HIV in the general population by actively seeking out persons with HIV and assisting them in accessing free treatment.
But studies have shown that homelessness can have a distinct effect on one’s ability to receive HAART treatment, due to a range of barriers, behavioural, social and structural, that make adherence to treatment difficult, especially for the homeless who use drugs.