Nunavut uses Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week to promote sexual health

Because HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is extremely rare in Nunavut, the territory’s Department of Health will use Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week to educate people about other sexually transmitted infections, especially chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis.

“If left untreated, some sexually transmitted infections can make people unable to have children. Others can cause brain damage, heart damage and even death,” a GN public service announcement says.

Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week runs from Dec. 1 to Dec. 6 this year.

However, a recent surveillance report prepared for the Public Health Agency of Canada contains no Nunavut-specific HIV/AIDs numbers.

The national agency does say that in 2017, two Inuit males and one Inuit female living somewhere in Canada were reported to be infected with HIV in 2016, while two Inuit males and no Inuit females were infected with HIV in 2017.

But it does not say where in Canada those HIV-infected Inuit live. Inuit represent only two-tenths of one per cent of all HIV/AIDs cases in Canada where the ethnicity of the patients has been reported.

So the numbers have to be treated with caution, the public health agency says, because race and ethnicity were not reported for nearly half of all HIV/AIDS cases in Canada in 2017.

As for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, infection rates in Nunavut were extremely high, as of 2017, the last year for which stats are available:

Chlamydia
Chlamydia cases in males: 509
Chlamydia cases in females: 951
Total chlamydia cases: 1,460.

Gonorrhea
Gonorrhoea cases in males: 230
Gonorrhoea cases in females: 315
Total gonorrhea cases: 545

Infectious Syphilis
Infectious syphilis cases in males: 33
Infectious syphilis cases in females: 55
Total infectious syphilis cases: 88

So if you’re sexually active, the GN says you should get tested for syphilis and other STIs:

• If you have symptoms, like painless sores or discharge from the penis or vagina.

• Before having sex with a new partner.

• Every three to six months if you have had more than one partner.

• And even if you use condoms.

You can find more information on sexual health at www.irespectmyself.ca.

And you can get male and female condoms, and lubricants, for free at local health centres and some other locations in communities, the GN says.