In Indonesia, people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHAs) have for too long stigmatized and discriminated for their illness. The Indonesian National AIDS Commission (KPAN) has to play a more active role in ensuring that not just AIDS is reduced, but beyond that that PLHAs will no longer be stigmatized and discriminated against.
Results from an initial overview of the randomised injectable opioid therapy trial (RIOTT) has shown that clients form a 'hard-to-treat' population responded well and made notable gains in abstaining from street heroin and improvements in health and social functioning.
Civil society in Asia Pacific are mobilising early for next year's UNGASS on HIV. There will be some linkages between the recent UNGASS on drugs and this upcoming UNGASS on HIV.
Argentina's Supreme Court decriminalised the small-scale use of marijuana, opening the way for a shift in the country's drug-fighting policies to focus on traffickers instead of users. Elsewhere in Latin America, Colombia and Mexico have already decriminalised the possession of small amounts of drugs. Brazil and Ecuador are looking at an initiative to legalize some drug use.
Two years after the initial launch during the ICAAP in Colombo, the Asian Network of People who Use Drugs (ANPUD), the only regional network of drug users in Asia, is forging ahead and being formalized as an active organization driven by its membership.
The Brazilian Commission on Drugs and Democracy was launched last week in Rio de Janeiro. This initiative by IDPC member ,VivaRio, is a national follow-up to the recent Latin American Commission.
On 11 August, a satellite session titled UNGASS & Community: Civil Society Involvement in UNGASS on HIV was organized by the 7 Sisters, World AIDS Campaign, UNAIDS and GESTOS at the 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP9).
At the recent ICAAP meeting held in Bali in August, Mr Inang Winarso (a harm reduction expert from the Indonesian AIDS Commission) called for more leadership on a humane approach to drug policy.
Malaysia suffers from one of the worst HIV epidemics among drug users in Southeast Asia. 70% of HIV transmission is linked to injection drug use. Malaysia’s strict policy of incarceration for drug users has resulted in over 6 percent of its prisoners being HIV-infected, three times the rate in U.S. prisons.