Showing posts with label HIV/AIDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HIV/AIDS. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Congress’s Holiday Message to People Who Use Drugs: Drop Dead
And the craziness continues in the land of the free and home of the brave....
Congress’s Holiday Message to People Who Use Drugs: Drop Dead
Fifteen days ago, President Obama delivered a
major speech, recommitting the United States to fight AIDS here and
abroad. This week, Congress will once again prohibit the use of federal
funds for syringe exchange. Almost 30 years into the epidemic, we are
still having this fight. This ridiculous, unproductive fight. It adds up
to this: we deny people at extremely high risk of HIV the means to
prevent infection.
OR NOT!
By any measure, syringe exchange works. It dramatically reduces HIV infection without increasing drug use. Do you want to get drug users into treatment for addiction? Syringe exchange helps. Do you want to ensure that police officers aren't stuck with dirty needles in pat downs?
Syringe exchange helps. Do you want to reduce the number of people on costly lifetime treatment for AIDS? Syringe exchange helps. Do you want to remove dirty needles from parks and playgrounds? Syringe exchange helps.
There is absolutely no dispute about the scientific evidence on any of these fronts. Eight federally funded reviews found that syringe exchange reduces HIV without increasing drug use. It is endorsed by every major medical association, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Nurses Association. In 2008, the CDC concluded that the incidence of HIV among injection drug users had decreased by 80 percent in the U.S. over a 20-year period in part due to syringe exchange programs.
Two years ago Congress lifted the ban, giving states the option to use federal funds for syringe exchange.
Unfortunately, the reinstatement of the funding ban deals a lethal blow to HIV programs that are proven to work. State health departments with firsthand experience responding to injection drug use understand that peer-driven needle and syringe programs make their communities safer and healthier. In the midst of the fiscal crisis, many of these programs are being cut or scaled back, making federal funds all the more important. But sadly, once again politics trump public health.
Twelve percent of all new HIV infections in the U.S. are among injection drug users. We could bring that number to zero—and help people access treatment for addiction at the same time. But the Congress chooses not to.
OR NOT! By any measure, syringe exchange works. It dramatically reduces HIV infection without increasing drug use. Do you want to get drug users into treatment for addiction? Syringe exchange helps. Do you want to ensure that police officers aren't stuck with dirty needles in pat downs?
Syringe exchange helps. Do you want to reduce the number of people on costly lifetime treatment for AIDS? Syringe exchange helps. Do you want to remove dirty needles from parks and playgrounds? Syringe exchange helps.
There is absolutely no dispute about the scientific evidence on any of these fronts. Eight federally funded reviews found that syringe exchange reduces HIV without increasing drug use. It is endorsed by every major medical association, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Nurses Association. In 2008, the CDC concluded that the incidence of HIV among injection drug users had decreased by 80 percent in the U.S. over a 20-year period in part due to syringe exchange programs.
Two years ago Congress lifted the ban, giving states the option to use federal funds for syringe exchange.
Unfortunately, the reinstatement of the funding ban deals a lethal blow to HIV programs that are proven to work. State health departments with firsthand experience responding to injection drug use understand that peer-driven needle and syringe programs make their communities safer and healthier. In the midst of the fiscal crisis, many of these programs are being cut or scaled back, making federal funds all the more important. But sadly, once again politics trump public health.
Twelve percent of all new HIV infections in the U.S. are among injection drug users. We could bring that number to zero—and help people access treatment for addiction at the same time. But the Congress chooses not to.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Russia and Harm Reduction
In
Russia, numbers of those with problematic drug use issues have been increasing. This is especially true where opiate narcotics are
concerned. The numbers of those dependent on heroin are increasing at
alarming rates. Reasons for this trend reflect the usual culprits. Poverty, increased desperation, trauma. Once hooked, users have little chance of escape. Russia bans substitution
therapies like methadone. Government officials and health experts alike have publically stated
that substitution therapies are "no way to treat
addiction." Leaders in psychiatry and addiction issued this statement: “The
effective way to solve the problem of drug addiction treatment is an
intensive search for and introduction of new methods and means that
focus on complete cessation of drugs use by patients with addiction,
their socialization into a new life style free from drugs, but not on
exchanging from one drug to another.”
With the high levels of poverty in Russia many users cannot afford
to purchase heroin. Desperate to shake off the terrible flu like symptoms, users have turned
to a homemade substance referred to as "Krocodile". The technical
term, desomorphine is a derivative of morphine. It is cheap and made fairly
simply from codeine, which does not require a
prescription. It won its street name, Krocodile because of its
effects on the user. Injected without further purification,
Krocodile literally rots the flesh. Skin becomes scaly and green.
These symptoms are actually signs of phlebitis
and gangrene.
Some studies have estimated the life span of Krocodile users to be
2-3 years.
Russia
is facing a time of great civil unrest. People are tired of the
awful conditions under which they have been forced to struggle for
many years, tired of the lack of commitment from their leaders
regarding change, and sickened by wide spread corruption. While
“leaders” feel they are entitled to take from the people, even
while the people do without basic necessities.
It
has finally become widely accepted in many parts of the world that
those who use drugs problematically do so in order to temper
emotional agony. Finally the misinformed belief that drug use itself is the problem has been put to rest. There are underlying issues which make it undesirable to
stop. If getting high is your only means of escaping from terrible
life circumstances, and depression, then people really have no right to demand that you simply quit without providing opportunity and hope.
Unfortunately
many countries like Russia criminalise drug use itself, and the
treatments (save abstinence) which are known to save lives. This
creates conditions where drug users are unnecessarily exposed to HIV,
and HCV; a mentality of judgment; stigma which prevents people from seeking
medical treatment; and high rates of
preventable deaths.
Russia is faced
with the fastest growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the world. And unlike
many other countries sex is not the primary method of transmission.
Injection drug use accounts for as many as 80% of new infections.
See the following stats on Russia from 1996-2006 as documented by the
UN.
- Of the nearly 400,000 people living with HIV approximately 14,000 are receiving treatment.
- 55% of those diagnosed with HIV are persons between 15-24 years of age.
Despite the degree of hopelessness, there
are those who are fighting back and speaking out.
Alexei,
a former prisoner advocates for drug users one person at a time. His
sister is HIV positive and terrified to seek medical attention for
fear of judgment and mis-treatment.
Masha
Ovchinnikova is an activist and project coordinator at FrontAIDS, a
Russian AIDS activist group
in Moscow. The group advocates for expansion of needle distribution
and exchange programs, as well as access to discrimination free AIDS
treatment and for methadone maintenance programs to be widely
instituted.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
World AIDS Day 2011
Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths.
December 1st is World AIDS Day. Its a good time to remind ourselves of the work left to be done with regards to the unnecessarily high risk of contracting HIV/AIDS and HCV for those doing time in Canadian jails. This of course is directly related to Canada’s propensity for cruelty regarding the treatment of those who use illicit drugs. We treat drug use as a criminal rather than a health issue. We criminalize and incarcerate people who are likely already suffering terribly. See:
Historical Trauma, Sexual Abuse, and HIV Risk Among Young Aboriginal People Using Injection Drugs
Childhood Trauma and Injection Drug Use Among at Risk Youth
Not only do we remove them from whatever support systems they may have had, and force drug users to abandon their children, their homes and belongings, but we then lock them (known drug users) in places and refuse to provide them the healthcare services they need such as access to harm reduction equipment.
"A 1995 Corrections Canada survey found that prisoners in federal institutions are 30 times more likely than other Canadians to have injected illegal drugs."
Two Canadian agencies doing amazing and radical work in advocating for prisoners who are at risk of or who are HIV/AIDS, HCV positive, are the Prisoner’s HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN) and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.
Some must read documents from them;
Clean Switch: The Case for Prison Needle Exchange in Canada – this 14 page document applies the Canadian Charter to prisoner rights to healthcare including harm reduction information and equipment.
Clean Switch
A really important project the Legal Network took part in was the work done around including those most affected by drug use policy and criminalization – those who use the drugs.
Nothing About Us Without Us, Greater, Meaningful Involvement of People Who Use Illegal Drugs
Commemorating World AIDS Day 2011
For information on HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and testing in Canada try these links:
One Life to Live
AIDS Service Organizations 411 - Canada
AIDS Committee of Toronto
PASAN - AIDS Services for Criminalized People with HIV
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