Fiji now joins Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea as the only Pacific nations with a formal needle and syringe programme.<\/p>\n
Following the passing of the Bill by parliament on Thursday, Fiji’s Health Ministry described it as a “monumental milestone” in the fight against HIV\/AIDS.<\/p>\n
“To be clear: this does not legalise illicit drugs,” the Ministry said in a Facebook post.<\/p>\n
“It legalises compassion. It builds a protective bridge of healthcare to the most vulnerable among us.”<\/p>\n
The Health Ministry said the legislation was grounded in human rights, confidentiality, and freedom from discrimination.<\/p>\n
“It allows our frontline health heroes, pharmacies, and peer outreach workers to distribute sterile equipment, condoms, PrEP, and life-saving counselling safely and without fear.”<\/p>\n
Fijian Health Ministry Dr Atonio Lalabalavu said the Bill sets out what harm-reduction may permit.<\/p>\n
“This includes the free distribution of skin-penetrating instruments, including needles and syringes, condoms and condom lubricants, Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and other means of HIV prevention,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It may also provide facilities for the safe return and management of used items, targeted counselling, information in HIV\/AIDS awareness and materials, and referrals to HIV treatment, rehabilitation, mental health and other health and social support services.”<\/p>\n
The Bill also allows other measures to be approved by the health minister on the recommendation of the HIV\/AIDS Board where those measures are necessary, Dr Atonio added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fiji now joins Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea as the only Pacific nations with a formal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-617842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}