PRISONERS WHO INJECT DRUGS: Public Health and Human Rights Imperative

[B]y entering prisons, prisoners are condemned to imprisonment for their crimes; they should not be condemned to HIV and AIDS. There is no doubt that governments have a moral and legal responsibility to prevent the spread of HIV among prisoners and prison staff and to care for those infected. They also have a responsibility to prevent the spread of HIV among communities. Prisoners are the community. They come from the community, they return to it. Protection of prisoners is protection of our communities.1 Prisoners have long been identified as a group particularly vulnerable to HIV and, more recently, hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection due to the high prevalence of HIV and HCV among prisoners and the lack of measures within prisons to prevent transmission. In recent years, a handful of countries have responded to the HIV and HCV epidemics in Ralf Jürgens, LLM, DR.JUR, is a consultant working on HIV/AIDS, health, policy, and human rights and the former Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, and Glenn Betteridge, LLB, BCL, is Senior Policy Analyst at the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. Please address all correspondence to the authors c/o . Based on a presentation given by Ralf Jürgens at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs Ministerial Segment: Ancillary Meeting on HIV/AIDS and Drug Abuse in Vienna, Austria, on April 16, 2003. It was updated and adapted for publication in Health and Human Rights by Ralf Jürgens and Glenn Betteridge in 2005. Copyright © 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College