We would like to congratulate our team member, Martin St-Jean, on being highlighted by the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS for his recent presentation at the Virtual 23rd International AIDS Conference this July. The report described Martin’s nominal role in leading a project aimed to identify how the disproportionate burden of drug overdose death has significantly impacted the life expectancy of those living with HIV in British Columbia, Canada.
An excerpt of the British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS Forecast Newsletter stated:
“Our epidemiologist Martin St-Jean and his team’s presentation looked at the impact of drug overdoses on life expectancy among people living with HIV in BC and identified risk factors associated with increased overdose mortality. St-Jean’s team found survival gains from effective antiretroviral therapy being threatened by drug overdose deaths among people living with HIV.
The BC-CfE analysis included 10,362 HIV-positive people aged 20 or older in our province’s HIV/AIDS Drug Treatment Program clinical registry. About a quarter of these people injected drugs. With their findings, St-Jean’s team concluded that overdose prevention and substance use treatment are necessary components of quality HIV care programs. This vital study comes at a time when BC’s opioid crisis is worse than it has ever been. May saw a record 171 people die from drug overdoses. That record was tragically broken in June, which saw 175 people die of illicit drug toxicity. In the first six months of this year, 728 British Columbians died from drug overdoses. As of this writing, COVID-19 has killed 194 in BC.”
A full version of the Newsletter may be found here.