Free to Live Well with HIV in Prison

'Free to Live Well with HIV in Prison': Ca’ Foscari have come together with scientific societies and NPOs for an innovative project aimed at raising awareness on HIV and improving the quality of life for the HIV positive in prisons.

FREE TO LIVE WELL WITH HIV IN PRISON is the brain child of an established collaboration between NPS Italia NPO - Network for HIV-positive people- the Society of Medicine and Health Penitentiary - SIMSPe NPO - and the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice with the unconditional support of ViiV Healthcare.

The considerable number of detainees, increase in the average age of prisoners, the high frequency of subjects with pathological risk factors and the limited ability to access alternative measures of detention have helped to raise the number of inmates with complex diseases and HIV infections in prisons, with a high percentage of detainees unaware of their HIV status.

The project FREE TO LIVE WELL WITH HIV IN PRISON focuses on these specific targets:
- To implement knowledge, with regards to the prisoners, which allows them to make responsible and informed choices about their own health during their time in prison, promoting their physical well-being above all in view of their return to society;
- Offer health care personnel, prison officers, educators and volunteers in prison the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills for adequate safety management in their daily work;
- Gather information on the health needs of inmates, and provide tools to be given to Regions and to the Local Healthcare Units in order to meet those needs.

Fabio Perocco and Alesssandro Battistella, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca' Foscari, will join infectious disease specialists at SIMSPe in the coming months to carry out articulate training and information activities in 10 prisons for adults and a penal institution for minors. The project will reach around 1,000 detainees in six regions: Lazio, Calabria, Liguria, Sicily, Puglia, Marche.
In each prison at least two interventions will be carried out: one addressed specifically to detainees and one for trainers.

"This project is part of a research-action project on the knowledge of HIV that the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice has followed in recent years, with reference to different types of the population. - comments professors Perocco and Battistella. In this case, working with prisoners, in addition to contributing to the development of their awareness of the real problems related to the disease, will allow to deepen some sociological aspects of HIV perception in prisons."

For Margherita Errico, president of the Nps Italia NPO, “the strong suit of this kind of education lies with its non-traditional form, striving to provide adequate information on risks whilst living as an inmate on topics, like HIV, that are still difficult to approach due to being permeated with stigma. The project looks at overcoming difficulties through an alliance between civil society, the scientific community, activists in the fight against HIV, and penitentiary staff ".

"The enhanced training of experiential interventions of Peer educators has long been at tradition of SIMSPe, and it reveals all of its expressive force on occasions such as this. Emerging data from the sessions of our recent 17th Agorà has allowed the exposal of a vast array of pathologies  that is necessary to bring to the light in order to ensure better prevention against the disease, but also to secure the safety and effectiveness of treatments. ” Luciano Lucania, President of the SIMSPe NPO.