The UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals released its outcome document earlier this month which states that by 2015 it hopes to have achieved its eight anti-poverty goals, including reversing and stopping the spread of HIV by implementing harm reduction measures. This agreement which has been adopted by world leaders states that prevention programmes should be accessible and expanded to include ‘male and female condoms”, “sterile injecting equipment” and “harm-reduction efforts related to drug use’.
Although this report reinforces commitments made by UN member states back in 2001 and 2006 on HIV/AIDS prevention, and reaffirms that harm reduction has been accepted within the broader context of HIV prevention, IHRA estimates that funding for HIV-related harm reduction must be increased dramatically – at least twenty-fold to meet neeD.