ABSTRACT
This chapter examines access to two types of specialized medical care—drug abuse treatment and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) testing—among injecting drug users (IDU). IDUs are generally a medically underserved group. Despite the individual and public-health value of HIV testing, it is estimated that little more than half of this group has even been tested for this disease for which they are at great risk. The politicization of health-care access in general may well intensify and broaden in the next few years, developing into an even more critical political issue. A good argument can be made that drug treatment and HIV testing are general social necessities that serve the interests both of those who may need them, and also the interests of many others whose lives or health may otherwise be hurt. For drug injectors and their communities, as for many working-class and middle-class people, aspects of “health care” can become a question of life and death.
