*Warning - Contains Sexual Content

HOW TO RESPOND IN A SITUATION WHERE SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SHARE NEEDLES

So – youre in a situation where youre forced to use somebody elses needle, or somebody else is forced to use your needle, right? What do you do?

After you or the other person uses the needle, clean it thoroughly with bleach and water before the next person uses it. Full-strength bleach has been known to kill the HIV virus. The following illustration will show you the steps you need to take to clean your needle.

• Step 1: Insert needle into bleach, draw bleach into gbarrle of needle. Do not add water to bleach.
• Step 2: Remove needle filled with bleach from bleach and shake left to right vigorously.
• Step 3: Inject bleach from barrel of needle
• Step 4: Insert needle into water. Draw water into barrel of needle. Do not add bleach to water.
• Step 5: Remove needle filled with wter from wter and shake left to right vigorously.
• Step 6: Inject water from barrel of needle.
• REPEAT STEPS 1 THRU 6 AT LEAST TWO MORE TIMES

HARM REDUCTION

Harm reduction, as a public health policy, was developed in response to the hepatitis epidemic in Australia and Europe in the early eighties. Substance users organized themselves and advocated for their rights to health care and prevention tools. This organizing manifested itself in the form of needle exchange programs when public health activists started to understand the way in which hepatitis and HIV were most effectively transmitted through contaminated syringes.

Harm reduction does not judge legal and illegal drugs and drug use as good or bad, but rather looks at people's relationship to drugs, encouraging safer drug using practices. This presents an alternative and challenge to the more traditional tenets of the disease concept or total abstinence models. Instead, harm reduction recognizes the competency of users to make choices and change their behaviors and lives.

In some circumstances, this same principle can be applied to sexual behaviors that put individuals at risk for HIV. For example, in resource-poor areas where condoms may not always be readily available, a counselor and client could discuss strategies to reduce relative risk for STI/HIV transmission during unprotected vaginal intercourse. One such strategy is to have the man withdraw his penis from the womans vagina prior to ejaculation (although pre-ejaculate does contain HIV, this practice may somewhat reduce exposure). Alternately, clients may decide to reduce their number of partners. While these practices may not be considered "effective" prevention measures, some may consider reduction of risk better than no action at all. Each womans situation is different and with support, she must make her own decisions as to what is feasible and safe

Source: All original materials copyrighted © 2003 by EngenderHealth.
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