Scaling up harm reduction in prisons: a role for prison monitors and new tools

By Gen Sander

Harm Reduction International has published a new tool for use by prison monitoring mechanisms (national, regional and international) to monitor the management of communicable diseases and harm reduction in prisons and prevent human rights violations in this context. Gen Sander, Human Rights Analyst at Harm Reduction International, introduces the tool here.

"Last October, I wrote a blog for PRI in which I discussed the necessity of tackling communicable diseases such as HIV, hepatitis C (HCV) and tuberculosis (TB) in prisons. I explained that prisoners are significantly more likely to be living with these diseases than the general population for several reasons, including the fact that people who use or inject drugs comprise a large portion of the world’s prison population as a result of punitive drug laws, combined with an absence of harm reduction services, such as needle and syringe programmes (NSP) and opioid substitution therapy (OST), which are proven to prevent HIV and HCV transmission and strongly recommended by WHO, UNAIDS and UNODC."

Click here to read the full article.

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