Point-of-care STI testing fast and unavailable in Atlantic Canada

A quick test for sexually transmitted infections that is made in Atlantic Canada isn't available to patients in the region, at a time when New Brunswick is falling behind when it comes to testing for STI's.

Point-of-care testing is a fast, on the spot way to test for HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B. Although the kits are made in Nova Scotia, they aren't available in Atlantic Canada.

Jacqueline Gahagan is a professor of health promotion at Dalhousie University and says the time has come for the tests to be made available.

"For people in the rest of Canada that have had access to this test for close to a decade they would not say it's ground breaking, they would probably say more like: it's about time," she said.

Point-of-care tests can cost about $15 each for the hepatitis B and syphilis tests and have to be ordered through provincial health departments, but New Brunswick doesn't do it.

Debbie Warren from AIDS Moncton knows the benefits of the tests from her time spent in Swaziland. She said the tests don't even need to be administered by a doctor.

"It's pretty basic, it's a little kit," she said. "You just take a little lancette, and prick your finger, draw the blood and within a minute your results are there."

Warren said 400 to 500 people access services from AIDS Moncton each year and she would be happy to train her staff to administer the tests.

"If I can go to rural Africa and have this test and yet I can't do it in one of the most wealthiest countries in the world, right, it's just a little mind boggling why we are behind," she said.

Warren is now part of a working group looking at how to test in rural settings, but no meetings are planned with the province.

She said rural patients face an even greater challenge.

"Well hopefully they have a doctor. Then they have to call up and make an appointment, not necessarily life-threatening so you might wait two weeks, three weeks," she said.

"Go visit their doctor, have a discussion with doctor, get a requisition, go to the hospital, get the blood drawn, get it tested and the results back to the doctor. and you may or may not have to have an appointment to go the doctor, so it's a process."

New Brunswick hasn't released any numbers on sexually transmitted infections since 2013.

The department of health wouldn't respond to CBC's questions about the point-of-care tests.