'HARM REDUCTION KEY STRATEGY IN FIGHTING HIV'

To Stem Incidence Among Injecting Drug Users

"HIV epidemic getting increasingly feminised"

KOLKATA: To stem the increasing incidence of HIV among injecting drug
users (IDUs) in South Asia, the legal framework in the respective
countries has to accommodate the provisions of harm reduction, says a
United Nations-commissioned report. Providing clean needles and
syringes to drug users, condoms to prisoners and sex workers and drug
substitution treatment are often seen as abetting in drug
consumption, amounting to violation of law and thus attracting prosecution.

Releasing the report 'Legal and Policy Concerns related to IDU harm
reduction in SAARC countries' here on Tuesday, Oscar Fernandes,
convener of the Parliamentary Forum on AIDS, said legislators would
provide all support to fight the menace. The report was commissioned
by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to Lawyers
Collective, a non-governmental organisation working in the field of
public health, HIV and law in India.

Epidemic Proportions

Drawing attention to the epidemic proportions of HIV prevalence among
IDUs and the containable nature of that epidemic, Gary Lewis,
representative of UNODC, Regional Office for South Asia, said: "The
response was not keeping pace with the scale of the epidemic."

He estimated that about 10 per cent of IDUs in India, whose numbers
might range from 90,000 to 1,90,000, were HIV-positive. While
stringent penalties did not always lead to reduced drug use, these
exposed IDUs to riskier practices such as injecting pharmaceutical
products, Mr. Lewis said. The HIV epidemic was also getting
increasingly feminised, with women getting affected from their
partners as well as through increased drug use.