Can you tell us about your background and role in the organisation? Sue Purchase is the founder and executive director of Harm Reduction Sisters with origins dating back to 2011, but the organization was not operational until 2019 when she returned to her roots in Duluth, Minnesota. Sue has a history of drug use and…
How did your organisation start? In 1989 in Windsor Ontario Canada, five women+ concerned about social justice and poverty issues came together to begin exploring the need for a women+’s agency. The aim of the Centre was to create a non-threatening, non-adversarial, comfortable, participatory and supportive environment in which women+ felt a sense of empowerment….
Could you tell us about É de Lei and your work? My name is Ana Luiza, and I am a journalist and harm reduction worker. I currently work at the É de Lei Drop-in Centre, a non-profit civil society organisation that has been active since 1998, providing harm reduction services for people impacted by Brazil’s…
On 20 June, in honour of World Psychedelics Day, the Women and Harm Reduction International Network (WHRIN) and TalkingDrugs published a joint position paper on ketamine use and the urgent need for a gendered harm reduction approach. The paper is available on the WHRIN website and is endorsed by the Southeast Asia Harm Reduction Association (AHRA) and the Academy of…
With succession planning recently reaching fruition and leadership transitioning now under way, we take pause to reflect on the experiences of the network to date. WHRIN was founded in 2007 following a survey among 20 prominent women in drug user organising and harm reduction around the world and officially established in 2009. It was observed…
The WHRIN and ICW intern recently (November 2022) interviewed Daniel Wolfe, harm reduction specialist with the Global Fund. This resulting blog will be of particular interest to people involved in harm reduction services and rights protection for women and who are helping to guide programmingplans for the next round of funding in Global Fund countries….
We were incredibly lucky to be able to attend a portion of the AIDS 2022 conference on behalf of Women & Harm Reduction International Network in late July. It’s been a few years of virtual only, and it was so good to meet colleagues, old and new, in person for the first time since 2019….
Could you please tell us about your interest in women and harm reduction? “It was 15 years ago, I was sick and in pain, I just heard my family cries and thought I was going to die. But I was being saved – because our village head treated me with “the magic drug – opium”…
How did you become interested to work with women and harm reduction? For almost 3 decades I have been involved in HIV medicine and research and as a physician, delivering a range of services at homes and on the streets of Tijuana, Mexico. During this time, I witnessed how the outdated norms and bureaucratic practices…
What motivates you to work with women who use drugs? I’m from Mallorca where we have a very serious problem with the use of injectable drugs, especially heroin. I experienced it very closely. At the age of eighteen I lost a friend to an overdose and the number of friends lost as a result has…
Can you tell us about your interest in women and harm reduction? Women who use drugs (WUD) in Africa are subject to many demeaning labels such as being an incompetent and careless mother, a bad, valueless and sinful woman. Punitive drug policies add another label for WUD, that of a criminal. These labels cause women…
Can you tell us about your involvement with CAHMA? I am the Community Development Operations manager at CAHMA (Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy). I run a community development project which aims to provide new professional opportunities for people who use drugs and ATOD (alcohol, tobacco and other drugs) treatment – volunteering, mentoring, skilling…
How was the group formed and what are the main reasons? In Myanmar women who use/inject drugs have a higher risk of blood borne virus transmission, higher mortality rates and experience additional layers of stigma and discrimination compared with men who inject drugs. Most women who use drugs (WUD) in Myanmar have difficulty in accessing…