SAFE INJECTION ACTIVIST HONOURED

VANCOUVER - The Vancouver nurse who set up an unauthorized safe injection
site for IV drug users on the Downtown Eastside last year has won an
international human rights award.

Human Rights Watch and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network call 26-year-old
Megan Oleson a "defender of human rights," giving her their Award for
Action.

The award also goes to the Pivot Legal Society which worked with Oleson to
set up the temporary injection site while Canada's first legal supervised
injection site was still under construction nearby.

She says she and the others defied local officials because they couldn't
wait any longer.

"It was exactly at a time where the Vancouver Police Department was cracking
down on drug users and really placing a lot of people in jeopardy and making
poor people's lives miserable, basically."

In the past, Human Rights Watch and the Legal Network have handed the Award
for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights to activists in China, Thailand and
South Africa =AD all developing nations.

Ralf Jurgens of the Legal Network likens conditions in which Vancouver drug
users live to those in the third world =AD not just because of the rate of
HIV and Hepatitis C infection, but also because their treatment by the
authorities.

Jurgens concedes life is now improving for IV drug users in the Downtown
Eastside.

Oleson, meanwhile, is now trying to set up a supervised site where crack
users can smoke without spreading disease.