Madam Speaker, the health crisis in the downtown east side community of Vancouver continues. This community is facing an epidemic characterized by the highest incidence of HIV infection of intravenous drug users in the western world. It is reported that there is a 50% infection rate of an estimated 6,000-plus intravenous drug users who frequent the area and now this crisis is spreading to other areas as well.
As reported today, HIV infected drug users are showing up in larger numbers in the Kamloops and Kootenay regions. On September 25 the Vancouver and Richmond regional health board declared a public health emergency because of this issue. On October 23 the board brought forward an action plan to respond to this crisis.
There is a desperate need for leadership from all levels of government to combat this health crisis, to save lives, to protect the community and to reduce harm associated with obtaining drugs on the street. So far the province of British Columbia, the regional health board and even the municipal government have responded, but not the federal government.
The question being increasingly asked is where is the Minister of Health.
Since this summer I have raised this issue many times. I wrote to the minister in July, in September and in October not only to make the minister aware of the extent of this health emergency and its devastating impact on people and the community of Vancouver East but also to request a meeting so this issue could be discussed further. There has been no response and no action.
Why is the minister ignoring the national action plan on HIV, AIDS and injection drug use published in May and produced by the national task force? Why is the minister not participating with other interested parties across the country in the 10th annual B.C. conference on AIDS taking place in Vancouver this very week?
At that conference the chair of the national task force, Dr. Hankins, charged yesterday that politicians are afraid to take the lead on this issue.
When it comes to the political will shown by the federal government, I would agree with her on that assessment. In the Vancouver Sun recently the Minister of Health was quoted as saying that the HIV injection drug crisis in Vancouver East is a justice issue, but when the Minister of Health was the justice minister in 1995 he told the then minister of health of British Columbia, when discussing the Cain report, that this was a health issue.
It is time to stop passing the buck because lives hang in the balance. How many more people have to die before this government takes action? When will the federal Minister of Health show leadership as called for in the national task force report and make it clear that he will acknowledge this epidemic as the health crisis it is and take action?
If the minister does not, in ten years can we expect a royal commission posing the same questions that the Krever commission has already posed such as why when we had the chance to act did the government do nothing, or why did lives have to be lost because the political will was lacking?
I call on the minister to act now or he may find himself the first witness called to task if his inaction and the government's inaction result in even more lives lost and devastated communities.