The 22nd International Harm Reduction Conference is underway this week in Beirut, Lebanon, and an article published yesterday in The Lancet underscores the goals of the “Beirut Declaration on HIV and Injecting Drug Use: A Global Call for Action,” a new document released at the annual meeting. In the paper, the International Harm Reduction Association is asking world leaders to scale up global efforts for evidence-based HIV harm reduction programs among injection drug users. Needle and syringe exchange programs, opioid substitution and antiretroviral treatments need greater implementation to help the estimated 16 million people who inject drugs worldwide, the authors write.
Drug injections account for approximately 30 percent of HIV infections outside sub-Saharan Africa and are responsible for nearly 80 percent of infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Participants in the UN High-Level Meeting on AIDS, who will be congregating in New York this June, are encouraged to take these statistics into consideration as they direct efforts toward relieving the global health burden of HIV.
Misplaced moral judgments have largely prevented increased funding for harm reduction, according to the group.
“If you substitute ‘smokeless tobacco products’ for ‘needle exchange programs,’ then you’ll come up with an appropriate call for tobacco harm reduction,” says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Harm reduction programs offer benefits for injection drug users risking their lives by exposure to HIV (among other bloodborne infections), as well as to smokers who risk their lives from increased risk of lung cancer and other diseases, yet these strategies are not implemented due to misguided public sentiments while millions of lives remain at stake.”