Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bangkok Post - July 17, 2004
Apiradee Treerutkuarkul
In his final words to the 15th International Aids Conference, Paisan Suwannawong, a key member of the Thai Drug Users Network, said it was time the government introduced comprehensive programmes and brought changes to its "repressive" policies against Aids sufferers."We only offer them the choice of prison or military-run rehabilitation centres. Is this harm reduction or harm production?" he asked.
Mr Paisan said the government had made no real effort to treat drug users on par with other patients, saying injecting drug users were the only group where HIV infection rates had never changed over the past 10 years.
Mr Paisan said discrimination was no small thing for people living with the virus and attending the conference. They were invited to speak at some events but had not been given time to speak. Some delegates were also stopped and questioned because they were tattooed and perceived to be drug users.
An alliance of Aids activists said they would keep an eye on Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to see whether he upheld his promise to end discrimination against injecting drug users. "We are tired of broken promises," he said.
The prime minister pledged during the opening ceremony on Monday to implement a harm reduction programme.
Senator Mechai Veravaidya said it was time the government, especially the prime minister and Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan, took the matter of intravenous drug users more seriously and came up with a better harm-reduction project.
The government could no longer waste time to combat the virus prevalent in this maginalised group as it posed a grave threat to the whole population, Mr Mechai said.
The issue was spotlighted during the conference with a call for clean needles and methadone for infected drug users.
Andrew Ball, a World Health Organisation official in charge of the HIV/Aids Prevention Department, said the agency supported the idea and was in the process of putting methadone and clean needles on its essential drugs list.
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