By Veronika Oleksyn, Asso­ci­ated Press

The U.N.‘s top inves­ti­ga­tor on tor­ture and pun­ish­ment warned Fri­day that over­crowded pris­ons are breed­ing grounds for AIDS.

Often, inmates are held in inhu­mane con­di­tions in which the HIV virus is spread through the use of non-sterile drug injec­tion equip­ment, sex­ual con­tacts, tat­too­ing and shar­ing of razors, Man­fred Nowak said.

“There is a global prison cri­sis,” he told an inter­na­tional AIDS conference.

Nowak, who has vis­ited deten­tion facil­i­ties around the world, urged author­i­ties to inform pris­on­ers of the risk of HIV trans­mis­sion and to offer them free con­doms, HIV test­ing and coun­sel­ing. He also pressed pris­ons to offer nee­dle and syringe pro­grams, opi­ate sub­sti­tu­tion ther­a­pies and methadone treatments.

“Sci­ence tells us exactly what we have to do, it’s just a ques­tion of polit­i­cal will to imple­ment it,” Nowak said.

In addi­tion, prison guards should live up to their oblig­a­tion to pre­vent rape and other forms of coer­cion that thrive in packed environments.

“One of the most impor­tant mea­sures to pre­vent HIV trans­mis­sion would be the reduc­tion of over­crowd­ing,” since it leads to vio­lence and con­di­tions that are con­ducive to the spread of the virus, he added.

Nowak said that, although reli­able fig­ures are hard to come by, the preva­lence of HIV in pris­ons is gen­er­ally much higher than in a country’s wider population.

In Ukraine, for exam­ple, the preva­lence of HIV in prison is at least 10 times that of the over­all pop­u­la­tion, he said.

Dmytro Sher­me­bey of the All-Ukrainian Net­work of Peo­ple Liv­ing with HIV/AIDS — who was diag­nosed with HIV, tuber­cu­lo­sis and hepati­tis after spend­ing nine years in a Ukrain­ian jail — stressed that inmates have a right to both treat­ment and pro­tec­tion from the disease.

“They have the right because they are human,” Sher­me­bey said.

While about 10 mil­lion peo­ple are incar­cer­ated every year, some 30 mil­lion enter and leave pris­ons annu­ally — mak­ing it a pub­lic health prob­lem for soci­ety, accord­ing to Nowak.

“Prison health is pub­lic health,” he said.