[Drug addiction and AIDS]

Drug abusers are one of the main groups exposed to the HIV contamination: they account for 23.3% of the cumulative cases of contamination in France. If sharing injection equipment is the major risk factor, we must consider the use of some specific drugs, personality factors, socioeconomic status and sexual behaviors to be significant risk factors. Nowadays, programmes aimed at reducing the transmission of HIV among drug injectors are raising. Information, education, HIV testing, free access to sterile injecting equipment, methadone maintenance programmes and prevention of risky sexual behaviors are the main tools of this policy.