RESPONDING TO GLOBAL HIV/AIDS & INJECTION DRUG USE

Abstract

Internationally, HIV and injection drug use (IDU) are emerging under conditions of poverty,, high unemployment, punitive drug-policies, and inadequate health care. Often lacking access to basic services, information about HIV, and social-economic opportunities, infection is often transmitted unknowingly by injection drug users (IDUs) to their sexual partners. This makes the epidemic difficult to contain, creating an AIDS pandemic. This paper reflects on the key health and development issues that emerge in preventing growing HIV infection among IDUs. The essential arguments are twofold. First, HIV and IDU are more than individual health issues, but rather complex development problems based in social situations and structures that further enable conditions of HIV infection and IDU. Second, from a public health and legal standpoint; IDUs are vulnerable citizens who are entitled to care. When their rights are not promoted and protected, the impact of infections and diseases on individuals and communities is worse and difficult to contain. A rights based approach (RBA) is then explored, which moves beyond simply providing services to meet human needs and uses a human rights perspective to health and development to strengthen the individual ability to demand such services. The suggested way forward is that responses should include the provision of a wide range of treatment and care options, social economic development to encourage social and economic security, and reform in the arenas of drug, welfare and economic policies.