SEEDS has been actively involved in health and other social interventions in different areas of Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi/NCR with great enthusiasm and commitment since last two decades. SEEDS has been continuously implementing Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) targeted intervention project in Bhojpur district since June 2010 to achieve the NACP goal under technical guidance & support from NACO/BSACS.

HIV prevalence of 0.26% in the adult population, India has an estimated 2.1 million People living with HIV (2015). Bio-behavioural surveys confirm that HIV prevalence is high or ‘concentrated’ among ‘key populations’ (KPs) also known as High Risk Group (HRG) who have unprotected sexual contacts with multiple partners or who engage in injecting drug use.  IDUs are not injectors at all times in their injecting life-span. They may inject, then fall back into no injecting (e.g. oral) drug use, or abstinence, and then return to injecting. Thus IDUs are classified in two categories for the purpose of programming: ƒ Current injectors: IDUs are those who used any drugs through injecting routes in the last three months. ƒ Shadow users: When injecting drugs, e.g. opoids (tidigesic), are not available, some IDUs switch over to oral or inhalation drugs or vice-versa. Conversely, when oral or inhalation drugs are not available, some users shift temporarily to injectables. Drug users who have done so in the last six months are called shadow users. In addition to addressing IDUs, with our IDUs intervention it also ensures that they also address the regular sexual partners of IDUs, as many of them are likely to be infected, and some of them may be IDUs too. It is equally important to remember that some IDUs might be sex workers or MSM, and some of them are also female IDUs are a third HRG for which targeted interventions are of critical importance. HIV is highly transmissible through the sharing of needles and other injection equipment, so it can spread very rapidly within networks of IDUs who share injecting equipment with each other. Once HIV prevalence is high in the IDU population, it can expand quickly into their sexual networks. Some IDUs are also sex workers, which can quickly link HIV transmission in the IDU networks to transmission in the larger high-risk sexual networks. It is important to recognize that like sexual transmission of HIV, HIV is essentially preventable among IDUs and their sex partners too.