THUNDER BAY -- There are still times people take a step back from Rene Boucher when he tells them he is living with HIV.
“That for me really shows there is still that misconception on how HIV is transmitted,” he said Friday morning after speaking at the 2012 World AIDS Day breakfast at the Victoria Inn.
“As a person living with HIV, I live with that stigma every day."
Boucher was the keynote speaker at the breakfast and received a World AIDS Day award along with the late Gabe Kakeeway.
Boucher worked with Kakeeway on HIV and AIDS prevention and education in the Aboriginal community and spoke about the work Kakeeway started.
“We know the numbers in the Aboriginal community are over-representative when it comes to HIV and AIDS and that we’re a high-risk population,” Boucher said.
“That was one of Gabe’s passions, getting the word out about HIV and AIDS and doing prevention and education. He played a really instrumental role in the early days of HIV.”
Today Boucher continues that work as the Ontario First Nations HIV/AIDS education circle representative. He is working on addressing care treatment support in First Nations.
“We really don’t have a formal place to go to access services for people living with HIV in the First Nation communities. We’re currently bringing together people from different First Nations in Ontario to talk about those issues,” he said.
There were about 150 people at the breakfast Friday, including several city high school students and representatives from both the public and Catholic school boards.
AIDS Thunder Bay community development and education director Bob Manson was ecstatic to see so many young people in attendance.
“If we want to change the world, we’re going to have to get youth involved,” he said.
The theme for this World AIDS Day is Getting to Zero – that means seeing a day when there are zero deaths from HIV/AIDS, zero new infections and zero discrimination.
“I think it’s a real opportunity now when you can get to zero with this new generation because this is a preventable disease,” Manson said.
There are have been 1.8 million HIV/AIDS related deaths in the world this year and 2.4 million new infections, bringing the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS to 34 million.
