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“No population should be stigmatized by their government.”
Those were the words of OUTSaskatoon’s new interim executive director, Jack Saddleback, following a social media post by the Government of Saskatchewan on Tuesday night.
The post depicted two men standing next to one another, along with a link to information on HIV on World AIDS Day.
The government later apologized for the post, deleting it on Wednesday morning.
Yesterday in marking World AIDS Day, Government of Saskatchewan social media pages used a photo that stigmatized HIV/AIDS and those that live with the disease. The photo has been deleted, and we unreservedly apologize.
— Government of Saskatchewan (@SKGov) December 2, 2020
“We within our province are still seeing epidemically high rates of new infection of HIV and AIDS. Within the queer community, we are for sure a small percentage of that. The biggest per cent is people who are using intravenous drug use,” Saddleback said Wednesday.
He said he believes the post only serves to further stigmatize HIV and the queer community at a time when HIV and AIDS are preventable and treatable.
“To have the government of Saskatchewan, I suppose, reiterate some archaic mentalities of what HIV is and who it affects certainly makes me a little disappointed in where they are … As we go forward, that’s just one piece of this larger puzzle in being able to address these issues,” Saddleback said.
“The idea that it was only within the queer community is definitely not fact. To see that the Government of Saskatchewan, in the year 2020, was putting out content that would I suppose allude to this being (a) ‘queer men’s disease’ is definitely not the best of leadership positions.”
Saskatchewan has the highest rates of HIV and hepatitis C infection in the nation.
Saddleback acknowledged, and thanked, the government for its Wednesday morning apology. He said OUTSaskatoon continues to work in a collaborative nature with other community-based organizations to curve the infection rates within the province.
He said there is still lots of work to be done, however.
“We need true, meaningful investment from the Government of Saskatchewan to further curve these new infection rates,” said Saddleback.
He used examples of provincial funding to the safe injection sites — including Prairie Harm Reduction’s current Saskatoon site, operating on a community-based fundraising budget — as well as funding for clean needles and for addiction and recovery programs as ways to continue the word of further curving the infection rates.
