World AIDS Day, December 1, 2001

The fact is: AIDS Isn’t Over...and you can help.
AIDS isn't over. Infection rates in Canada are higher than ever for
women, Aboriginal peoples,youth and men having sex with men. Treatment can put the disease in remission--but only for a certain time.

People are desperately seeking information about alternatives. Very
serious side effects such as diabetes and heart disease from multiple-drug
therapy combinations are creating new health concerns for people living with HIV/AIDS and their families.
In these times, people need accurate, objective, up-to-date treatment
information more than ever. CATIE makes sure that people have the facts on HIV/AIDS because they need the facts in order to make informed health decisions that will help them manage the treatment of their disease. CATIE is Canada’s only national bilingual HIV/AIDS treatment information provider of lifesaving information to people living with HIV/AIDS, their doctors, clinics, family members and caregivers.

You can make a difference this World AIDS Day by making a donation of
$20, $35 or more. Donate Now.

You can make a difference this World AIDS Day by volunteering to help.

CATIE launches magazine for Canadians with HIV/AIDS

Welcome to The Positive Side! For those of you who are new to this
CATIE publication, we're delighted to be in your hands. If you've read it
before, you'll notice quite a few changes. Throughout the past two years,
CATIE has sought your ideas about your treatment information needs. This
"new and improved" Positive Side reflects much of the juicy feedback we've heard from you - and we hope you'll keep letting us know your thoughts.

The Positive Side (PS) started in the early 1990s as a newsletter
about complementary therapies for people with HIV/AIDS (PHAs). Now, more than ever, complementary therapy has a new relevance to the lives of PHAs because of the emerging side effects from HIV and from the drugs used to treat it. So, while the focus remains the same, we've breathed new life into PS to take a more holistic look at life with HIV/AIDS. To round out your whole treatment management, PS now touches on all of the aspects of your health that need nurturing: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and sexual. Our main message? There may be some things in life - and living with HIV - that are beyond your control, but there are many things you can do to make the best of living with HIV.

CATIE AGM and Natural Approaches to Treatment of HIV/AIDS Conference

On February 8-10, 2002, CATIE will be holding its Annual General
Meeting in conjunction with Canada's first- ever conference on Natural
Approaches to the Treatment of HIV/AIDS. The conference is being co-hosted by The Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. The conference workshops are designed to provide a forum for participants to share practical information about the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the treatment and management of HIV/AIDS-related health issues. The conference workshops will be presented by dynamic speakers from the HIV/AIDS community and naturopathic specialists from Canada and the United States.

There is a limited scholarship program designed to assist people
living with HIV/AIDS and local AIDS organizations to take advantage of this incredible learning opportunity.

CATIE website a global health resource for people with HIV/AIDS

The Internet explosion has led to the creation of thousands of
health-related websites, and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish
between the good and the bad, what's credible and what's worthless. But on this World AIDS Day 2001 we'd like to introduce you to a Canadian website that has received kudos from around the world for the quality of information it provides for people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS.

The Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE) website
(www.catie.ca) was named one of the "Best on the Web" by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which evaluates all types of medical sites, not just those related to HIV/AIDS. Designed as an educational vehicle for individuals and groups affected by and concerned with HIV/AIDS, CATIE's website empowers people by providing a rich trove of reliable treatment information ranging from medical discoveries to the latest complementary and alternative therapies. The "Treatment Publications" section contains newsletters, practical guides, fact and supplement sheets, magazines, brochures, Internet links and clinical trial reports; the "Electronic Library" houses web documents, Internet resources and a CATIE-designed thesaurus-the only one of its kind in the world-to help navigate terminological complexities.

Since its launch in 1996, the CATIE website has grown to where it is
now widely recognized as being one of the best online sources of information about HIV/AIDS. In the beginning, it contained 29 pages. Today the site features more than 10,000 pages of information. In its first month of operation, 891 pages were read or downloaded. In April of 2001, that number reached the 3.9 million mark.