L-R: Dr Jean-Claude Schmit, Director of Health; Dr Carole Devaux, Chair of the AIDS Surveillance Committee; Lydia Mutsch, Minister of Health; Anne Calteux, Ministry of Health;
Credit: MSAN
Luxembourg Minister of Health Lydia Mutsch and the new Chair of the Surveillance Committee on AIDS, Infectious Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Dr Carole Devaux, met last week to discuss the issue of AIDS transmission among drug users.
Dr Devaux, the new Chair of the committee, previously trained as an immunologist at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States before working as an assistant researcher between 2004 and 2006 at Henri Poincaré University in Nancy. She also worked for the Luxembourg Institute for Health (LIH) and has been involved, over the last eight years, involved in the clinical management of HIV-infected patients in Luxembourg and in project management in several European networks of HCV and HIV focused on clinical virology, drug resistance and molecular epidemiology. Dr Devaux succeeds Dr Vic Arendt, medical specialist of the National Service of infectious diseases.
During their exchange on 20 October 2017, the Minister of Health and Dr Devaux addressed the high rate of HIV transmission among drug users in Luxembourg as well as the worrying situation surrounding the Abrigado drug consumption hall in the station quarter. Various avenues have been suggested to contain this development and to improve medico-social follow-up, including a strengthening of the "test and treat" system which aims to diversify and decentralise screenings, as well as a better access to low threshold housing, especially for women, increased resources available to structures in place or universal medical coverage for the poor. The principle of a joint study to be carried out by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction was also retained.
These measures form part of the authorities' desire to improve the conditions necessary for stabilisation, the therapeutic offer and the medico-social follow-up of the people concerned, as well as the many challenges to be addressed by the new edition of the AIDS plan that will be presented in December.
