You can’t help but like Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco.  He is a handsome silvered-haired dynamo, a Latino through and through, who is enthusiastic about everything he touches, even about being alive.  Clearly Francisco loves life and that comes through in the interview which follows.

Not that his life has been an easy one.  Born in Chile forty-eight years ago, he was,  according to his 2011 profile in CATIE’s The Positive Side “raised by a poor, single mother who earned her living cleaning rich people’s houses. As a child he was molested by Catholic priests, and as a teenager he traded sex for cash. “I get along with people with an edge, with difficult lives,” he says, “because I see myself reflected in them.”"

Francisco came to Canada in 1985; within months he was diagnosed with HIV.  Says CATIE “Most of the friends he arrived with in Vancouver moved on to New York City, which was “kind of a gay Mecca in our imaginations,” he says. “We were all young gay men who didn’t know anything about AIDS. We all got infected and they all died. Some of them died of HIV-related complications; some of them died undocumented. So, yeah, there’s a trail of dead people behind me, whom I honour, of course, all the time.”"

Francisco himself was diagnosed with Kaposi’s  Sarcoma back then, its  spots covering most of his body. He saw first one and then a second partner die of AIDS-related complications. But like many others he was saved from the jaws of death by the protease inhibitors which surfaced in 1996.

Meanwhile he had been pursuing higher education at B.C.’s Simon Fraser University where he eventually earned his Ph. D in 1999 – one of the first Canadians with HIV to earn a doctoral degree. His focus since has been on research on HIV and rehabilitation and, latterly, in the training of new researchers in the field of HIV. Resident at the OHTN (Ontario HIV Treatment Network) in Toronto, he has been Program Manager of Universities Without Walls.  Just recently he has been appointed the OHTN’s Director of Education and Training.

As you’ll see, Francisco is a lively and engaging interview subject.  For this interview I asked him the questions off camera with those questions edited out, allowing Francisco’s responses to shine through.

Videography by Guy McLoughlin

Photo by Bob Leahy

James Gilette discusses the big moments of HIV activism over the past 3 decades at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network 2011 Research Conference in Toronto with PositiveLite.com publisher Brian Finch.

This video was produced as part of an ongoing  collaboration between the OHTN and PositiveLite.com

Libby Davies, MP for Vancouver East talks Housing and HIV with PositiveLite.com editor Bob Leahy. Libby discusses the need for a Canadian Housing Strategy that would include populations with HIV/AIDS, based on the premise that housing is a human right. The video was filmed at the North American Housing and HIV Research Summit in New Orleans in November 2011, as part of a collaboration between the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN) and PositiveLite.com

At the 2011 Ontario HIV Treatment Network Research Conference, Chris Tsoukas talks with Brian Finch about chronic inflammation and cardiac issues and their role in HIV.