A BREEDING GROUND FOR COMMUNICABLE DISEASE

Needle Exchange Program Urged HIV Affects 2% Of Adult Inmates

Jim Motherall figures there were only seven to 10 usable needles
making the rounds of Manitoba's Stony Mountain Institution at any one
time during his 19 1/2 years inside the federal penitentiary.

He calculates that more than 200 drug-using inmates would typically
be sharing them.

"So there was at least 20 guys on a syringe," says Motherall, who has
spent a total of 32 years behind bars for myriad violent crimes and
has spoken widely on prisoners' health issues.

"And if one of those 20 had HIV and they're sharing a syringe, then
it's just going on down the line."

A University of Toronto study of Ontario prisoners presented at the
International AIDS Conference in Toronto this week estimates that 2
per cent of the province's adult inmates are HIV-positive, or about
1,000 prisoners during the study years of 2003 and 2004. (The rate
for hepatitis C among adult prisoners in Ontario was 17.6 per cent,
the study found.)

To contrast, just 0.2 per cent of the Canadian population is infected
with the AIDS-causing virus.

Several researchers and inmate advocates told the conference that
corrections authorities were failing prisoners badly by offering no
credible HIV/hepatitis prevention program in jails and prisons.

With no prisoner needle-exchange programs running anywhere in Canada,
and badly flawed condom and safe-tattooing programs, prisons have
become breeding grounds for communicable blood diseases like AIDS and
hepatitis C, scientists and prison advocates warn.

"If there was as much HIV and hepatitis C transmission in Canada as a
whole as there is in Canadian prisons, there would be a public outcry
and Canada would have the worst AIDS problem in the developed world,"
Joanne Csete, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal
Network, told a news briefing yesterday.

"People expect the sentences that are handed down by the courts, but
they shouldn't have to have a life sentence of HIV or hepatitis C,"
she said in an interview.

The U of T report, titled Prevalence and Risk Factors for HIV and
Hepatitis C in Ontario Jails and Detention Centres, says injection
drug use is by far the biggest culprit in the spread of both diseases
among provincial prisoners.

It's estimated that 30 to 50 per cent of prisoners in Ontario have a
history of injection drug use. And the report says studies in Ontario
and Quebec show that 5 to 8 per cent of inmates in those provinces
have admitted to injecting drugs while behind bars. In male federal
prisons, the drug injection rate, as reported by prisoners
themselves, has reached 24 per cent.

Yet nowhere in the country is there a program that gives inmates
access to clean needles, advocates told the conference.

Free-needle programs offered inside jails by a handful of liberal
European countries -- as well as in some repressive states like Iran
- -- have led to huge declines in HIV transmission between prisoners, Csete says.

In Switzerland, a long-standing prison needle program has virtually
eliminated transmission of HIV and hepatitis in jails.

"It's stunning -- you really can stop it," Csete says. "There are all
kinds of ways you can do these things, and they're extraordinarily
effective. And unlike condoms, where you have to convince people to
wear them, people who inject drugs want to have clean needles."

Csete says there has never been a reported incident of needles being
used as weapons in prison. And even if such an incident occurred, a
clean needle would be preferable.

Canadian programs for dispersing condoms behind bars have also been criticized.