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Home > Issues > Harm Reduction
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Safe injection activist honoured
CBC Radio |
WebPosted Sep 10 2004 08:26 AM PDT |  | | VANCOUVER - The Vancouver nurse who set up an unauthorized safe injection site for IV drug users on the Downtown Eastside last year has won an international human rights award.
Megan Oleson | Human Rights Watch and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network call 26-year-old Megan Oleson a "defender of human rights," giving her their Award for Action.
The award also goes to the Pivot Legal Society which worked with Oleson to set up the temporary injection site while Canada's first legal supervised injection site was still under construction nearby.
She says she and the others defied local officials because they couldn't wait any longer.
"It was exactly at a time where the Vancouver Police Department was cracking down on drug users and really placing a lot of people in jeopardy and making poor people's lives miserable, basically."
In the past, Human Rights Watch and the Legal Network have handed the Award for Action on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights to activists in China, Thailand and South Africa – all developing nations.
Ralf Jurgens of the Legal Network likens conditions in which Vancouver drug users live to those in the third world – not just because of the rate of HIV and Hepatitis C infection, but also because their treatment by the authorities.
Jurgens concedes life is now improving for IV drug users in the Downtown Eastside.
Oleson, meanwhile, is now trying to set up a supervised site where crack users can smoke without spreading disease.
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