Policy to Enhance HIV Prevention Among Drug Users

A study from Bangladesh found that community based detoxification programs were a useful initiative as an advocacy strategy for the harm reduction program in communities where harm reduction was not widely accepted nor understood. Dave Burrows shared his study of the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Russian Federation and his analysis of the response. Harm reduction initiatives were undertake by international NGOs and his analysis of results of this work suggest that it takes seven years of sustained harm reduction to develop and adequate response to the epidemic in a country with widespread injecting drug users and to prevent the epidemic Russia would have had to start harm reduction before the virus was discovered. Robert Broadhead pointed out that although the effectiveness of needle exchange programs was well documented, the programs were still unpopular within communities. The study was on the impact of the closure of a state-sponsored needle exchange on clients and the community at large. Community debate and adverse media publicity created controversy that forced the closure. The study found that the community problems that were blamed on the needle exchange remained after the closure and that injecting drug users, after closure, went back to partaking high-risk behaviour by obtaining needles from unreliable sources and by reusing and sharing needles.