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“Indigenous women living with HIV experience everyday incidents of racism that impede their access to care disproportionately to other groups, according to a study involving more than 1,400 women across Canada.
This contributes to a loss of Indigenous women along the HIV “cascade of care” – a term used to describe clinical stages of treatment such as diagnosis, retention in care and viral suppression – at a markedly higher rate than other than other ethnicities (-25 per cent compared with -15 per cent to -16 per cent).
“One of the things that came out, quite fascinatingly, in our study was that Indigenous women did have higher attrition rates,” said Angela Kaida, an associate researcher at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE), an associate professor at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and senior author of the study.
“But when we factored in experiences of racism – not [ethnicity itself] but how much racism you’re encountering in your everyday life – that’s really what was causing the effect.”
Examples include prejudiced comments from health-care providers and disrespect for cultural traditions.”
– The Globe and Mail, Everyday racism hinders Indigenous women with HIV from accessing care: study.
“While some people have raised concerns about anti-Indigenous racism in the Northwest Territories’ health-care system, an expert says it’s not just an issue in the territory.
Dr. Janet Smylie said it’s one of the biggest health inequities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people across Canada.
“To me, the most important impacts are that people are dying unnecessarily or experiencing disability,” she said.
Smylie has been studying the phenomenon in Canada’s health-care system for the past 15 years. She’s a researcher at the Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and a Métis physician who’s been practising for more than two decades.
Smylie said cultural bias can also lead to higher rates of commercial tobacco use among First Nation, Inuit and Métis people, because they’re not getting the same public-health messages as other Canadians.”
– CBC News, People ‘dying unnecessarily’ because of racial bias in Canada’s health-care system, researcher says.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
