In the Fight Against HIV/AIDS, Governments Ignore Drug Users

by Te-Ping Chen · 2010-03-01 12:41:00 UTC
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Asked by Reuters about how governments are doing in the fight against HIV/AIDS, Dr. Don Des Jarlais -- a leading researcher on the disease -- didn't exactly bite his tongue. As he put it (somewhat acidly), protecting individuals "might require that policy makers [first] acquire a basic scientific understanding of drug use and addiction."

Which, if the results of a new study from the Lancet are any indication, is hardly the case. In fact, according to the report, governments are ignoring 90% of the world's 16 million injecting drug users, and refusing to offer them any help in defending themselves against HIV/AIDS at all.

What is it about drug use that makes policy suddenly turn rabid? Here in the U.S., for example, rape and murder are both serious crimes, but apparently not so serious that convictions will disqualify you for college financial aid -- but a marijuana-related conviction might.

Those politics prove deadly, because there are few populations more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS than injecting drug users. Already, 20% of them around the world have been infected. Take, for example, Russia, a country where fully 83% of HIV cases in 2007 were caused by injecting drug use. Or the United States, where one-third of people with HIV received their infection through drug use.

If you were to look at a map depicting harm reduction efforts, the world would be starkly broken down between haves and have-nots. In Ireland, for example, nearly all injecting drug users have accessed syringe or needle exchange programs in the past year, but that figure dips to beneath 3% in China and Thailand.

And on the whole, access would look patchy. Last week, we wrote about how global harm reduction efforts are going 95% underfunded. According to the International Harm Reduction Association's executive director, just 5% of the $3 billion recommended by UNAID is being spent on harm reduction per year in non-wealthy countries.

It's not often that you can point to a government like Iran's for being a beacon of rationality. But given President Ahmadinejad's far more progressive harm reduction policies -- and the dismal state of harm reduction around the world -- it's no surprise that even the staid World Bank is penning papers about what the country has to teach the world.

Photo Credit: Jayel Aheram

Te-Ping Chen Te-Ping Chen is a freelance writer and U.S. Truman Scholar whose writing has appeared in the Nation Magazine, the South China Morning Post magazine, Le Soir, and Slate.com.
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