Matt Curtis's Audio

Length: 5:33 Every time I hear Corinne Carey talk, I start dreaming of going to law school. Now with the New York Civil Liberties Union, Corinne founded the Harm Reduction Law Project at the , and followed that work with stints at Human Rights Watch and  fighting against the criminalization of people who use drugs. In this interview, Corinne talks about how legal aid services are crucial for ensuring that people who use drugs can benefit from HIV prevention and treatment services, and her work in the USA and overseas to embed lawyers in harm reduction agencies.

Length: 8:22 Beginning in the middle of June, the Cambodian government has swept up hundreds of people who use drugs, sex workers, and homeless people following passage of a USA-backed anti-human trafficking law.  People have been detained without charges in Khmer Rouge era camps in appalling conditions, without access to HIV and TB medications and other healthcare. Soon after the crisis started, Korsang, a Phnom Penh based harm reduction organization, went 24-7 to provide housing, nutrition, medical care and harm reduction services to scores of people in danger of detention.  In this interview, Korsang co-founder Holly Bradford talks about what’s going on, and what Korsang needs to keep people safe. You can help Korsang by donating through the Chicago Recovery Alliance (be sure to write Korsang in the ‘Designation’ line).  read more »

Length: 5:45 There’s a lot to celebrate about progress on HIV prevention and treatment in communities around the world. That can’t be said about HIV in prisons. Thousands are sick or dying, and governments – and the AIDS movement – have in most cases utterly failed to protect prisoners. Ralf Jürgens, the founding director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and a longtime advocate for prisoners’ rights, speaks in this interview about the need to refocus attention on prison HIV, and recent progress on prison harm reduction programming.

Length: 11:16 With his partner and a beautiful new baby daughter, Mauro Guarinieri relocated to Hanoi at the beginning of 2008 to take up a position as an HIV advisor with Constella Futures Group. In the two decades before that, Mauro fought for drug user and PLWH rights, becoming chairman of the European AIDS Treatment Group, chair of the global board of GNP+, and working for a couple years at the Open Society Institute. In this interview, Mauro talks about the shape of Vietnam’s HIV epidemic, and the government’s fits-and-starts effort to introduce harm reduction programs while still relying largely on prison, coerced detox, and other means of social control aimed at those most at risk of infection.

Length: 12:19

 

 

Dr. Konstantin Lezhentsev, a longtime leader in promoting HIV care and treatment for people who use drugs, is director of treatment at the All Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV, where he oversees programs integrating HIV treatment with drug and TB services.

With more than 1.5% adult HIV prevalence, Ukraine has been hardest hit by the Eastearn European HIV epidemic, largely driven by injection drug use. The partly good news is that Ukrainian civil society and government have made great progress on building a strong network of harm reduction services and providing HIV care and treatment to thousands of people with Global Fund and state funding.

At the same time, the state of HIV services in the prison sy stem is appalling, decent quality drug treatment is more the exception than the rule, and TB is killing far too many. On August 2, I talked with Konstantin about what's working in Ukraine, what's not, and what the Network is prioritizing in coming months.