How Police Can Arrest the Spread of HIV - New Report by Open Society Foundations

Across the globe, HIV rates are climbing among sex workers and people who use drugs. One of the main reasons is that they are criminalised. Too often sex workers and drug users are forced to choose between protecting their health and staying safe from police harassment or arrest.

But a novel approach to law enforcement is changing this, and may prove as critical to HIV prevention as a condom or clean needle. Through partnerships with HIV experts and community groups, police from Kenya to Kyrgyzstan are realizing their role in the fight against HIV.

In the video, Daniel Wolfe, director of the Open Society International Harm Reduction Development Program, talks about how police are working to implement harm reduction approaches to HIV prevention with these vulnerable populations.

The video accompanies a report published this month titled: To Protect and Serve: How police, sex workers, and people who use drugs are joining forces to improve health and human rights.

Around the world, sex workers and people who use drugs report that police are often a major impediment to accessing health and social services. Common police practices—using condoms as evidence of prostitution, harassing drug users at needle exchange points, or confiscating medications for drug treatment—fuel the HIV epidemic by driving sex workers and drug users away from life-saving services.

Emerging partnerships between police, health experts, and community groups are beginning to prove that law enforcement and HIV-prevention programs can work together to save lives while reducing crime. When successfully implemented, these programs reduce the risk of HIV and drug overdose, and protect the health and human rights of these communities.

Through detailed case studies from Burma, Ghana, India, Kenya, and Kyrgyzstan, this report examines how public health-centered law enforcement can reduce the risk of HIV infections among sex workers and drug users.

The lessons of more than two decades of the response to HIV are clear: Police reform and community-police cooperation are as crucial to HIV prevention among criminalized groups as a condom or a clean needle, and should be supported as a central part of HIV and AIDS programming.

Source: Open Society Foundations