As a peer advocate, Bobby Paul often spends time at Battle River Treaty 6 Health Centre and the Rapid Access to Addiction Medicine (RAAM) clinic in North Battleford, helping fellow patients navigate the testing, diagnosis and treatment process.
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
In the Battlefords, rates of HIV and hepatitis B and C rose sharply in 2019, and have continued to climb since then.
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.”
Knowing his status, and having access to free harm-reduction supplies in the community, has helped him avoid passing his Hepatitis to anyone else.
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.
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.
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.
