GENEVA, April 5 (AFP) - The Red Cross on Saturday urged governments to stop treating people who are at high risk from HIV/AIDS as "social evils" and to ensure that all intraveneous drug users have access to clean syringes.
The rapid growth of the disease in many parts of the world through drug use showed that attempts to marginalise or simply punish addicts only made them more likely to become infected, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said in a statement.
"Reach out to them and make their practices safe. Providing clean needles is a start," said Massimo Barra, founder of an Italian Red Cross foundation that assists injecting drug users.
HIV/AIDS rates in eastern Europe have soared by 1,300 percent in seven years largely due to shared injecting equipment, while about 90 percent of people infected with HIV in Russia are drug users, according to the Federation.
Epidemics in southern Europe, parts of North and South America, and Australia have grown sharply through the use of shared syringes, it said.
"The only way to reverse this trend is for governments to implement policies that see a deliberate shift from social exclusion to social inclusion of injecting drug users," said Barra, who is also a board member of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
"We know that by being singled out as deserving punishment, the unsafe practices of injecting drug users are being driven underground, resulting in a public health disaster," he added.
Studies indicate that programmes where authorities provide clean needles in exchange for used ones have reduced high-risk behaviour among injecting drug users by as much as 80 percent.
HIV infections were reduced by about 30 percent, the Federation said.
Bernard Gardiner, head of the Federation's HIV/AIDS unit, said the needle exchange programmes carried out mainly in western European countries helped contain the disease.
"Evidence is also clear that these programmes do not promote drug use. On the contrary, they are associated with decreased drug use," he added.
The appeal was issued to mark the start of a four day international conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on Saturday.
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