Prisoners are considered one of the most vulnerable groups that are at risk of getting infected with all kinds of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). It is also known that most of them are IV drug users (IDU).

Because, Prisoners’ have their own privacy concerning the difficulty to reach them, here comes the need to provide them with preventive information and health care services to help them avoid the risk of getting infected with HIV/ AIDS by drug use, by referring that for every country there are different considerate laws and its reservations inside prisons.

Hereby, the MENA network for harm reduction perceived the need for including a section for prisoners’ with a main goal not to neglect any of beneficiaries in particular the most vulnerable groups of IDUs who share needles to prevent them from getting infected with STI(s) especially HIV/AIDS.

For more information, please read the following topics:

Hepatitis is considered one of the most notable diseases that face humanity due to its rapid spread and its negative effects based on this spread especially on the human life and health.

The World Health Organization statistics refer that the number of cases infected with Hepatitis C comprises 3% of the world’s population, and it is considered one of the most serious types of the hepatitis infections that leads to depletion, cirrhosis and cancer of liver. Moreover, until now there is no vaccine for Hepatitis C, and the most important ways of transmission are unsafe sexual intercourse and sharing needles among drug users.

Hereby, the need for MENA network for harm reduction to reduce the risks of drug use and its negative effects; like the hepatitis infection. Therefore, this network attempts to provide sufficient information about hepatitis through studies, scientific articles and in addition to statistics that will be published consecutively on the website’s pages.

For more information, please read the following topics:

The HIV/AIDS is considered as one of the most difficulties that the medicine is facing actually because of the lack of finding a definitive curative treatment for it.

Therefore the governments and the international agencies considered the importance of activating the policies and strategies of awareness and thus preventing the increase of STIs and HIV infections.

Whereas HIV/AIDS and other STIs are related to the drug addiction, it was important that the MENA network on harm reduction insists on the limitation of drug harm and to get to the highest number of beneficiaries and partners through this interactive website.

Studies and statistics have proven that the effectiveness of therapy or the detoxification process is relatively low, because a quite huge number of drug addicts will be exposed to relapses after about five years of time. On the other hand treatment with Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST) (example: Methadone and other opiumian substances used in Medicine) helps drug addicts to persist on therapy for a longer period of time.

The OST reduces the percentage of drug injections usually performed by drug users, because most of the substances used for OST are not prepared in the form of injections and are prescribed under the supervision of a specialized physician.

The OST helps drug addicts by reducing the percentage use of injected substances, and sharing needles and instruments among them. Consequently it reduces the percentage of getting infected with HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). Furthermore, these programs help drug addicts through awareness about the principles of harm reduction and prevention.

It is known that the OST is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Council, and the international organizations as a basic strategy of prevention for IV drug users from getting infected with HIV. Thus, OST is available in most of the countries (USA, and a huge part of Europe). But unfortunately, in most of the Middle Eastern and   North African countries; that is the MENA region it is currently not available and its use is forbidden by the legal authorities.

            For more information, please read the following topics:

Harm reduction strategies for drug use are considered as positive and courageous steps which the international community shelter to it to reduce the transmission of AIDS within the drug users’ category.

These strategies proved their efficiency in reducing the number of HIV infection within the addicted people in addition of counseling centers for them which comport on main fundamental concepts as following:

Avoiding increasing percentage of infections risks that may be transmitted by sharing needles among addicted people and not only avoiding the practice, stressing on realization of imminent aims as reducing transmission of AIDS and the far-reaching aims as reducing of the drug addiction in addition to stressing on applying the chart of human rights completely without discriminating towards the drug users.

Utilization of many strategies to reach the harm reduction aims and working on many levels in a successive way to ensure the goal incipiency by schools and colleges and even the political key people and decision makers.

The participation of drug users themselves is very important on planning and on applying the prevention programs targeting drug users.

For more information, please read the following topics:  

Advocacy is a mechanism that defends human rights and protects their interest and helps them to take the right decisions to get the convenient services, and it targets towards the marginalized categories of people and rejected by the local society and the government.

Finding a mechanism to go toward a category of people and to gain its trust and to study its needs on diverse levels without trying to change its behavior, was  proved it’s much more efficient in reducing harm than marginalizing, rejecting and discriminating that category.

In this framework, and after decades of condemning the drug users as criminals, the governments in collaboration with the NGOs discovered that the mechanisms of discriminating, marginalizing and punishing the drug users are not efficient in harm reduction.

Therefore, they decided to consider the drug users as patients who need care, understanding, and help to be treated from addiction and to be prevented from contracting diseases.

Thus, it was important to create new laws for the care of drug users that lead them to the stages of prevention from harm reduction as the STIs and the drug effects.

For more information, please read the following subjects: