Saturday is National HIV Testing Day, and Ottawa Public Health is highlighting a new online they say makes STI testing more accessible than ever before. According to Patrick O’Byrne, a professor of nursing at the University of Ottawa and a nurse practitioner at Ottawa Public Health, Ottawa residents can now have free testing kits that detect HIV, gonorrhea and other STIs, shipped directly to their front door. He says the simple process begins on getakit.ca. “People go on, they register, answer a couple questions. The computer has a little robot in the back end that goes through and says ‘based on who you are and what you’ve told us, here is the testing that you need.’ People opt in or out of it. We build the kit and we send it to you,” O’Byrne told Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Ottawa with Kristy Cameron on Thursday. The program began in 2020, and now offers test kits for chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, hepatitis C and HIV. O’Byrne say the idea was to find the easiest way for people to get access to testing. “Think of it as like a skip the clinic,” he said. “Because if you go to a clinic, what do you do? You go to a clinic, you talk to somebody, they then give you those requisitions that you take to a lab, like LifeLabs or Dynacare or Bio-test, and then you get your results back. But in this case, you can skip that first one.” The service will provide users with necessary requisitions and also provides text updates every time a new result becomes available. The other advantage, O’Byrne says, is that at-home testing kits provide additional privacy. “You don’t have to go in and talk to somebody, you don’t have to be doing this in a public place, if there’s something very private to you, if you don’t want to talk about risk practices, whatever it is, you don’t have to,” he said. “Just go onto the website, we’ll send you the test, and you can do it yourself.” Those who report positive tests through the website will then be contacted to set up an appointment. When it comes to STIs in Ottawa, O’Byrne says there’s been an increase in gonorrhea. While HIV remains steady, the demographics have changed. “It’s shifted. I would say half of new infections continue to be guys who have sex with guys, but in the other half, we’re actually seeing increases in women — black women, and women who are members of indigenous communities,” he said. “People think, ‘well, I’m not at risk for HIV because it was historically a lot more for people who were using injection drugs or gay men.’ We’re actually getting a rise in the proportion for women.” O’Byrne says HIV treatment has advanced ‘amazingly’ in recent decades to the point where it is considered a chronic and long-term but manageable condition that has no effect on the lifespan of those diagnosed. While it is still possible to develop AIDS from HIV, that is generally preventable through treatment, O’Byrne says. “We have the treatments now, so there’s zero reason for us to be seeing that,” he said. For some, treatment involves a taking a daily pill or bimonthly to semi-annual injection. Despite the medical advances, O’Byrne says stigma surrounding the disease continues. “People are still shunned. They’re pushed aside. They’re rejected by family, friends, sexual partners, right? Potential romantic partners due to the diagnosis, or the stigma,” he said. “I think we still have a huge amount of work socially to move forward with, but the medical component is incredible.”
