Las personas que usan drogas en Rusia tienen derecho a agujas, metadona y dignidad

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Las personas que usan drogas en Rusia tienen derecho a agujas, metadona y dignidad

20 noviembre 2014

La Fundación Andrey Rylkov abre espacios de expresión para las personas que usan drogas y viven con el VIH. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

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This article was first published by the Foreign Policy Centre, and is adapted from a chapter in AIDS Today: 2014 Edition. You can read the original here.

Before Russia wrested control of the Crimean peninsula in March this year, HIV transmission rates were falling in this region, thanks to life-saving schemes offered to drug users including needle syringe programmes and opioid substitution therapies (OST). But since coming under Russia’s draconian drug laws, these schemes have been closed down, leading to at least 20 deaths already.

Russia’s dangerous stance toward drug users is causing untold harm in the fight against AIDS on the streets of our own cities and towns today. A shadowy world of drug-taking and rampant HIV infection pervades some of the most vulnerable groups in our society, who are stigmatised and marginalised by a state that refuses to take responsibility for their plight.

The facts speak for themselves: nearly 5 million people use illegal drugs in Russia, 1.7 million of whom are opiate users. Almost 60 percent of officially registered HIV cases in 2013 were also people who use drugs. In some cities, HIV prevalence among people who inject drugs is as high as 74 percent. The epidemic is on the rise, with 800,000 people officially registered as HIV positive and many others who do not even know their status.

Tuberculosis has reached epidemic proportions in Russia, now the primary cause of death among people with HIV, and 78 percent of men with both TB and HIV are injecting drug users. The total number of people with the hepatitis C virus who also inject drugs is estimated to be over one million.

Despite this shocking scenario, the state provides no services to stem drug dependency and its related health and social problems. People who use drugs are depicted by state officials as “deviant” and as criminals, and therefore undeserving of equal access to healthcare. The Russian government refuses to adopt even the most mainstream and well-studied approaches to drug treatment, including OST, which is actually illegal. Instead, anti-psychotic drugs that were used against Soviet dissidents are part of the standard regime for treating drug dependency in state facilities, a practise contravening international standards.

Click here to read the full article.

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