The US is pressing the UN to block the use of needle-exchange programs in countries where drug use is driving the spread of AIDS, arguing that the schemes encourage users to continue their habit.
But critics, including Britain, believe that the fight against AIDS in eastern Europe, central Asia and other parts of the world could be jeopardized if the US manages to water down the UN's policy.
The board of UNAIDS, the UN agency which coordinates the fight against the pandemic, is formulating a global prevention strategy in Geneva.
But the board may be forced for the first time to a vote on the issue.
Britain opposed the US position Monday, when UK international development minister Gareth Thomas, told the meeting in his opening statement that the UK wants to see "efforts to intensify harm reduction strategies, including needle and syringe exchange programs."
He said: "We support effective harm reduction programs, especially needle and syringe exchange and methadone among infecting drug users and their sexual partners in many countries."
The UK, he said, had "a different approach" from the US.
The row is critical, because needle sharing by injecting drug users is the main cause of the soaring figures for HIV/AIDS infection in many countries, and provides a gateway for the spread of infection into the heterosexual community through the partners of drug users.
Drug injecting is responsible for 80 percent of the cases in eastern Europe and central Asia, and is also driving the epidemic in a wide range of countries in the Middle East, north Africa, south and southeast Asia and Latin America. HIV prevalence within certain populations of drug injectors exceeds 80 percent.
Europe accepts evidence from studies which have shown needle exchanges to curb the spread of infection, but the US, which will not fund such studies domestically, does not.
The issue has already become fraught. At a meeting in Vienna earlier this year the UN agency responsible for the policing of narcotics, the UN office on drugs and crime, was forced to accept the US line and oppose needle exchanges.
USAid, the US development agency, is not permitted to fund or be involved with programs that include needle exchange.
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS