Canadian prisons are not meeting their duty to limit spread of HIV

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7375.1262/b

BMJ 2002;325:1262 ( 30 November )

News extra

Canadian prisons are not meeting their duty to limit spread of HIV

David Spurgeon Quebec

Canadian prisoners are up to 70 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the average Canadian, and known cases of HIV/AIDS in federal prisons have increased by more than 35% in four years, says a report by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

The prevalence of hepatitis C infection among prisoners is even higher, with 20% to 80% of prisoners infected, according to the source of the estimate, compared with about 0.8% in the general population.

Ralf Jurgens, the network�s executive director, said that despite several studies and nearly 10 years of recommendations for urgent and pragmatic action, "some jurisdictions have totally and abysmally failed to wake up to the reality of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and injection drug use in prisons."

He added: "There have been some significant positive developments over the past five years, but Canadian prison systems are still not meeting . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?