FDS Insight Newsletter Oct-Dec 2020

47 toilet. Approximately 10,000 sterile injection utensils were handed out daily, in exchange for used supplies, which were then properly disposed of. ZIPP-AIDS also offered anonymous HIV testing. Amid crises of housing and poverty, the city’s shelters were overflowing. I also organized emergency aid in trailers run by Pastor Ernst Sieber. Later, in 1988, his relief organization, Stiftung Sozialwerke Pfarrer Sieber, built an emergency addiction treatment center on the Konradstrasse. Although Sieber’s primary focus was spiritual guidance, he also saw the necessity of minimizing harm however possible. At Emilie Lieberherr’s behest, the Zürich city council invited Basel Criminal Court President Peter Albrecht and myself to a drug policy hearing. Which measures could best reduce harms to individuals and to society as a whole? Suggestions included needle exchange, controlled consumption spaces, methadone and, taking things a step further, heroin prescribing. The minimal impact of repressive tactics on drug consumption was firmly acknowledged. The city council accepted some of the ideas, publishing them as Ten Drug Policy Program Points. Since 1988, the health department had been running the Krankenzimmer für Obdachlose (infirmary for homeless people) on the Kanonengasse. The city then opened a whole series of contact and drop-in centers for local injecting drug users. Until recently, the city health services had also revamped a dozen cigarette vending machines to dispense injection utensils. A funeral a week Zürich and the Swiss gradually came to understand that though they might not desire drug use, it cannot be eradicated. The transition from abstinence dogma to harm reduction needed time to take hold. Needle exchange reduced the risk of HIV infections, but so many were already infected that at first, things just got worse. From 1985, my practice was located in Zürich-Altstetten. My partner Christian La Roche and I treated about 200 HIV/AIDS patients in our joint practice. Almost every week we found ourselves at a funeral. Back then, being HIV-positive was a death sentence. No one knew how long it would be until AIDS arrived. Enrique spent his days sitting on the waiting room sofa. He had nowhere else to go. His flesh wasted away to the bone, his long-lashed eyes were deep caverns, blinking in slow motion and his smile as delicate as a whisper. Occasionally, he’d take a sip through a straw before dragging himself to the toilet again. He died of extreme diarrhea. Marie, a single mother of a delicate little girl, had AIDS. Triggered by her immune deficiency, she suffered from the Cytomegalovirus, threatening her with blindness and suffocation. Twice a day, Marie had to inject ganciclovir into a rubber depot implanted under her skin. Her sweet little girl would lead her half-blind, feverish and trembling mother through their stuffy, hot