Vancouver Center Offering Services to People With HIV/AIDS to Open New Facility

The Vancouver, British Columbia-based Dr. Peter Centre, an HIV/AIDS treatment and care facility, recently began building a new $5.8 million facility to house its expanding operations, the Vancouver Sun reports. The center, which is currently located in rental space, provides daytime health services -- including medical care and methadone treatments -- meals, activities and "supportive living accommodations" to people with HIV/AIDS. The facility provides daytime services to 1,100 clients each month, and the new building will allow the center to boost the number of monthly daytime clients to 1,700. The number of people receiving housing accommodations each month will also increase from 10 to 24. The Sun reports that the center -- the first of its kind in Canada -- has helped improve the physical and emotional health of people with HIV/AIDS in Vancouver. Center residents have reduced their acute hospital bed stays by 98%, while daytime clients have reduced their hospital stays by 50%. The center is named after Dr. Peter Jepson-Young, a health care provider who cared for people with HIV/AIDS and who died of AIDS-related causes a decade ago. Maxine Davis, executive director of the Dr. Peter Centre, said that Jepson-Young helped change public attitudes in British Columbia regarding people with AIDS. The new center will be owned and operated by the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation (Petrozzi, Vancouver Sun, 11/18).