A new study has revealed that HIV-related deaths and new HIV infections among people who use drugs can be almost entirely eliminated by 2030 with a small shift in global drug control spending.
A new study has revealed that HIV-related deaths and new HIV infections among people who use drugs can be almost entirely eliminated by 2030 with a small shift in global drug control spending.
According to the new report released by UK-based NGO Harm Reduction International, “Harm reduction programmes such as clean needle exchange and opioid substitution therapy (OST) as an alternative to injecting heroin, has the potential to achieve a 78 per cent reduction in new HIV infections among people who inject drugs by 2030, along with a 65 per cent drop in HIV-related deaths.” Adding, that the effort would need a shift of as little as 2.5 per cent of expenditure away from current drug enforcement spending.
Globally, HIV prevalence among people who inject drugs is estimated to be 28 times higher than among the rest of the adult population.
Estimates suggest that between 8.9 million and 22.4 million inject drugs worldwide and 0.9-4.8 million of them are living with HIV. It estimated that $100 billion is spent annually on global drug enforcement and control.
The report, released ahead of the upcoming annual Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna beginning next week — the last major gathering before the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs that will take place in New York in April, adds that the global health impact of redirecting investment by 7.5 per cent would be even more staggering, virtually ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic amongst this group of people, by cutting new HIV infections amongst PWID and reducing HIV-related deaths by 94 per cent.
According to David Wilson, head of infectious disease modelling at the Centre for Population Health at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australia, who undertook the report, “This report presents clear evidence that harm reduction interventions are relatively inexpensive and can lead to large financial returns on investment. Most importantly, investing in what works — harm reduction, rather than funnelling money into largely failed punitive approaches — saves lives with massive population health benefits.”
The report gains significance as the world has already missed the UN target of halving HIV among people who inject drugs by 2015, by a staggering 80 per cent.
The report reflected on a decade of harm reduction and noted that programmes are now operating at some level in more than half of the 158 countries in the world where injecting drug use has been documented. It cites the potential of harm reduction in a country like Kenya, where modelling has shown that with 10 per cent OST coverage, HIV incidence will be reduced by 5-10 per cent among people who inject drugs, and with 40 per cent coverage there will be a 20 per cent reduction in HIV incidence.
