Whether it’s a new social media campaign in British Columbia with huge aspirations of ending HIV/AIDS in the province or work by the Red Cross to improve people’s lives in countries with limited resources, innovations are changing the face of health care for people living with HIV/AIDS in Canada and around the world.
In BC, the It’s Different Now awareness campaign supports a program that began in 2010 to test every single person in the province who has ever been sexually active. This massive testing operation aims to find the estimated one per cent of the Canadian population who have HIV and don’t know it.
With new tests that show results from a pinprick of blood in thirty seconds, and a ground-breaking treatment program that virtually eliminates transmission of the virus, technological, medical and program innovation can lead to overwhelming public health successes.
For the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, some of the most impactful innovations in global public health have come from the simplest ideas. Putting health workers on bikes in Ethiopia has brought primary healthcare to poor and rural communities that were too far from major centres to access any health services.
These ‘health extension workers’, some trained and supported by the Ethiopian Red Cross, have improved childhood immunization rates; HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention, and treatment; and improved use of insecticide-treated bed nets to reduce malaria infections.
For more on innovations in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, follow news from XIX International AIDS Conference taking place in Washington this week.