What Interventions Are Needed for Women and Girls Who Use Drugs? A Global Perspective

Abstract: 

Women and girls who inject drugs are more likely than their male counterparts to acquire HIV. In addition to criminalization, punitive laws, and social stigma that puts all injecting drug users at increased risk, women are made even more vulnerable by social, economic, and culturally embedded power imbalances. Women and girls are also less likely to seek treatment and healthcare, even when they are pregnant. This is in part due to underfunded harm reduction and drug treatment programs limited in their ability to surmount the unique barriers women face. This does not have to be the reality. There are steps–some simple, some more complex–that can reduce infection rates and provide women and girls with health care and harm reduction services that are designed with their needs and concerns in mind.

Harm reduction, specifically for women, can close the gap between the mere availability of services and their actual use and effectiveness. Here is what we know works:

• Centers only for women or that have women-only hours that are open according to the needs of their clients and are located in neighborhoods that are convenient and safe for women as well as particular minorities and migrants.
• Programs that offer safe, clean, age-appropriate spaces where children can stay while their mothers receive care.
• Centers that support rather than interfere with their clients' other commitments by offering mobile dosing services and take-home dosing.⁹ Services and policies that allow women flexibility in the frequency of their visits, such as increasing the number of needles/syringes that can be exchanged per visit.
• Integrated services that incorporate sexual and reproductive health education and services and that network with women's shelters, domestic violence and rape prevention, and drug treatment.⁶
• Programs that address the unique needs of specific subpopulations such as drug-using sex workers, women in prison, transgender women, and women who have sex with women.
• Legal literacy and services that empower people who inject drugs to challenge discrimination and abuse. Sensitization of law enforcement and healthcare personnel to reduce institutionalized stigma, discrimination, and abuse.¹ 

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/H41Wjg

By:   Malinowska-Sempruch, Kasia MSW, DrPH

Global Drug Policy Program, The Open Society Foundations, New York, NY.

Correspondence to: Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, MSW, DrPH, Director, Global Drug Policy Program The Open Society Foundation (e-mail:kasia.malinowska@opensocietyfoundations.org). 

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