For nearly a year and a half, a federally funded program has allowed sexual health advocates to distribute take-home HIV tests across Canada.
The funding for this infrastructure is set to expire at the end of the month.
“We’re really disappointed that it’s not going to continue,” said Chris Aucoin, executive director of AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia.
“We are going to try to do our best with what resources we do have and continue to make the tests available. But obviously, we’re going to be pretty limited in what that means moving forward.”
AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia took on the role as a central distribution point for the province, anonymously shipping tests through the mail, doing in-person handouts and travelling to rural communities.
The organization’s work seeks to address barriers, fight against stigma and educate the public.
“We’re still going to have access to the tests for free is my understanding from the Public Health Agency of Canada,” Aucoin said. “That’s good news, but all that overhead of the shipping costs, advertisement… the staff time and other costs is gone now that funding is now coming to an end as of March 31. ”
Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) told Global News that it “is continuing to explore options to make HIV self-test kits available to community-based organizations after March 31, 2024.”
While a 2020 target by the federal government to address global HIV has already been missed, advocates are hopeful that the government will make investments toward hitting upcoming goals to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
“They seem to allude that they wanted to do more,” Jody Jollimore, executive director of CATIE, an HIV and hepatitis C information organization, said of PHAC.
“Maybe the door is open here for us to continue some conversation and just to remind them that we’re not going to meet these targets if we don’t do something differently.”
While self-test program was time-limited, Jollimore thought it’s overwhelming success would convince the government to renew funding.
“Almost half of the people that we tested were first-time testers, that’s a huge success rate,” Jollimore said. “We know that there were clusters of folks who had HIV and didn’t know it that were identified as part of the project, which is a huge benefit to the entire system around HIV prevention and treatment and care.”
Aucoin said efforts across Nova Scotia saw many people under 30 take their first tests.
“Now we’re going to have to be scaling back again, and I’m disappointed in that,” Aucoin said.
“I’m also worried about the people that might have benefited from that over the next 12 months who now aren’t going to be able to. And how many new infections might happen because of that lack of a resource.”