ABSTRACT
The self-injection of drugs is a problem of global dimensions, with major significance for the spread of HIV-1 infection and other blood-borne diseases. The injection of drugs occurs in all global sectors. It is found in countries with a relatively long ‘tradition’ of self-injection, as in North America, Western Europe, and Australasia; and it is now found in many developing countries where self-injection is a somewhat ‘new’ phenomenon. It occurs even in countries which were formerly thought to provide their populations with some resistance to drug injecting because of their cultural heritage, their religious or spiritual history, their traditional patterns of drug use or their political or economic conditions. To the contrary, as Figure 1.1 shows, drug injecting is found in countries of all religious persuasions, all stages of economic development and all political systems.
