HUMANE POLICIES FOR DRUG USERS CALLED FOR

Participants Sick Of Broken Promises

Thai community leaders have demanded the government adopt more humane
policies to help intravenous drug users suffering from HIV/Aids infections.

In his final words to the 15th International Aids Conference, Paisan
Suwannawong, a key member of the Thai Drug Users Network, said it was time
the government introduced comprehensive programmes and brought changes to
its "repressive" policies against Aids sufferers."We only offer them the
choice of prison or military-run rehabilitation centres. Is this harm
reduction or harm production?" he asked.

Mr Paisan said the government had made no real effort to treat drug users
on par with other patients, saying injecting drug users were the only group
where HIV infection rates had never changed over the past 10 years.

Mr Paisan said discrimination was no small thing for people living with the
virus and attending the conference. They were invited to speak at some
events but had not been given time to speak. Some delegates were also
stopped and questioned because they were tattooed and perceived to be drug
users.

An alliance of Aids activists said they would keep an eye on Prime Minister
Thaksin Shinawatra to see whether he upheld his promise to end
discrimination against injecting drug users. "We are tired of broken
promises," he said.

The prime minister pledged during the opening ceremony on Monday to
implement a harm reduction programme.

Senator Mechai Veravaidya said it was time the government, especially the
prime minister and Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan, took the
matter of intravenous drug users more seriously and came up with a better
harm-reduction project.

The government could no longer waste time to combat the virus prevalent in
this maginalised group as it posed a grave threat to the whole population,
Mr Mechai said.

The issue was spotlighted during the conference with a call for clean
needles and methadone for infected drug users.

Andrew Ball, a World Health Organisation official in charge of the HIV/Aids
Prevention Department, said the agency supported the idea and was in the
process of putting methadone and clean needles on its essential drugs list.