'We’re putting Band-aids on things, but we’re not really fixing it,' says Battlefords HIV project coordinator Cymric Leask.
He sees peer advocacy as a chance to set a good example for his seven-year-old son, a budding math whiz who gets his love of baseball caps from his dad.
Paul is also living with Hepatitis C, and has spent 11 months waiting to start treatment.
The long wait between diagnosis and treatment has had major effects on his life and health, he said.
“My Hep C is chronic. I’ve had it before, and I’ve had treatment before, but that was when I lived somewhere else. Living on the street, I got it again.
“The waiting period hurts. It’s always in the back of your mind. It puts a hold on where your life is at.”
Battlefords patients wait months
Proper treatment can stop the spread of these diseases, but without enough local doctors to meet the need, patients are going without necessary medical care for months on end.
With treatment, chronic hepatitis C is usually curable. But long-term infections can cause serious liver damage — a prospect Paul has often worried about over the last year.
Two months ago, during a hospital stay, he was told that his liver was starting to scar after going so long without treatment.
Eventually, he was able to get the prescription he needed in Prince Albert. But it shouldn’t have been so hard, or taken so long, to make that happen.
The waiting period hurts. It’s always in the back of your mind. It puts a hold on where your life is at.
Bobby Paul
“I had to go all the way to Prince Albert just to see a Hep C doctor,” Paul said. “There should be one here, for people in the Battlefords and the area.”
In some ways, he considers himself fortunate — being so familiar with the sexual health and addiction medicine clinics, he was quickly able to get himself tested.
But his encouragement for others to get tested and come to the health centre can only go so far — especially when they know they won’t be able to start treatment if they do test positive.
“That’s the thing with a lot of people; they don’t know their status,” Paul said. “And I know for a fact that if there was a steady doctor here at the RAAM, more of them would say ‘OK, let’s go get tested.’
“I know from my own experience, when there were places where I couldn’t get help, I didn’t go back.”
An ongoing problem
Cymric Leask, HIV project coordinator in the Battlefords, said this has been an ongoing problem. When rates of HIV and hepatitis in the area started climbing, access to treatment lagged behind and never caught up.
“Here at our clinic we’ve found that if we don’t help people on that first visit, they’re not as likely to come back,” Leask said. “If they come in and we have that diagnosis for them, but we aren’t able to tell them when they can get help with that, they’re not as likely to come back in the future.
“And a lot of them are getting lost through the cracks, just because there isn’t that immediate availability to help them.”
Leask said the community has a hard time getting doctors of all sorts to work in the area — but communicable disease doctors, who could treat patients like Paul, are in particularly short supply.
“Right now, we have one doctor that comes once every two or three months,” said Leask. “He can only run his clinic for the seven hours that he’s here, for half-hour appointments. So that’s 14 people that can see a doctor every two or three months.”
By now, Leask and Paul estimate the number of Battleford and area residents who need treatment for HIV or hepatitis — if they only had a way to get it — numbers in the hundreds, and continues to rise.
“I don’t want to say I feel useless,” said Leask. “But what’s the point of me telling you this information (about your diagnosis) if I can’t help you further? I’m available, but there’s nothing to be available for.
“We’re putting Band-aids on things, but we’re not really fixing it.”
The Saskatchewan Health Authority says it’s working to maintain services for patients with communicable diseases like HIV and hepatitis, while it recruits to fill vacancies.
The Ministry of Health says anyone diagnosed with a sexually transmitted or blood-borne infection (STBBI), such as HIV or hepatitis C, “is encouraged to work directly with their family physician on a treatment plan. If they do not have a family doctor or treatment plan, they are encouraged to work with their local sexual health clinic for treatment options.”
Saskatchewan has one of the highest rates of hepatitis C infections in Canada, and the highest rate of HIV infections — more than double the national average.
— Local Journalism Initiative
Julia Peterson is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the StarPhoenix. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
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