NDARC has released two global reviews that show the extent of injecting drug use and infectious diseases in prisons, highlighting low treatment access across prison systems.
One in nine people in prisons globally have a history of injecting drug use and their risk of HIV, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis is up to 45 times higher than in the general population.
Yet access to infectious disease prevention, treatment and harm reduction services remains woefully inadequate, with most countries failing to provide basic coverage, according to two landmark reviews published in the International Journal of Drug Policy.
The findings confirmed that prison populations were a critical target group for eliminating HIV, viral hepatitis and tuberculosis.
“Prisons function as high-risk environments that amplify infectious disease transmission, which means we shouldn’t view this as just a prison health issue but a community-wide public health imperative,” said Scientia Professor Louisa Degenhardt AO, who was lead investigator of the study and Research Director at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), UNSW Sydney.
Read the studies here:
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395925003585
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395925003652
Media release here:
