As of 2023, Saskatchewan has triple the national rate of Hepatitis C cases, at 19 per every 100,000 people. After learning that there was no plan to decrease Hepatitis C rates in the prairie provinces, Waniska Indigenous Centre at the University of Saskatchewan created its own.

Project co-chairs Carrielynn Lund and Alexandra King spent two years speaking with people with lived experience, health care providers, and community leaders about how to improve treatment, testing, and education surrounding hep C.

Lund says their findings were converted into a written plan called the Prairie Hepatitis C Roadmap.

“(We found that) access to services was really difficult, and that was for people who lived in the urban area. It was devastating to those who lived outside of the urban centres.”

The pair also determined a need to increase reduce overall stigma, convert to a whole-body holistic form of treatment, use more inclusive language, and increase government funding.

“Providers, communities, community agencies, they are really the ones that are working with people on the ground, in the trenches, and they know what needs to be done,” King explains. “We need to strengthen our support of them so that they’re able to strengthen the work that they’re doing and serve community better.”

Over 60 individuals were consulted during the research phase, 25 of them with lived or living experience.

Lund says, “They were part of this all the way through, not just in the sharing circles…They were so excited to see that their quotes, their words, were put into the document.”

The team at Waniska hopes policy makers review the roadmap and work to implement its recommendations.

The report is available here.