Intimate partner violence and receptive syringe sharing among women who inject drugs in Indonesia: A respondent-driven sampling study

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV are overlapping public health problems that disproportionately affect women who inject drugs. Little is known about the relationship between IPV and HIV related unsafe injecting practices among women in low- and middle-income settings. This study investigated whether IPV victimisation was associated with receptive syringe sharing among women who inject drugs in Indonesia. Methods: Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) was used to recruit 731 women aged 18 + years, injecting drugs in the preceding 12 months, and residing in Greater Jakarta or Bandung, West Java. Population estimates were derived using the RDS-II estimator. Multivariate logistic regressions assessed relationships between different forms of past-year IPV (i.e. psychological abuse, physical and/or injurious assault, forced sex) and receptive syringe sharing, controlling for city differences and sociodemographic cofactors. Results: Overall, 21.1% of participants reported engaging in past-month receptive syringe sharing. In multi-variate analyses controlling for all forms of IPV, receptive syringe sharing was significantly positively associated with experiencing psychological abuse (OR = 1.86; 95% CI = 1.06,3.24; p = 0.030), physical and/or injurious assault (OR = 1.73; 95% CI = 1.04,2.89; p = 0.034), and several covariates: injecting pharmaceuticals only (versus heroin only) (OR = 3.58; 95% CI = 1.66,7.69; p = 0.001), experiencing unstable housing and/or homelessness (OR = 2.89; 95% CI = 1.41,5.95; p = 0.004), and residing in Bandung, West Java (versus Greater Jakarta) (OR = 2.33; 95% CI = 1.40,3.90; p = 0.001). Conclusion: IPV is a significant risk factor for HIV-related injecting risk among women who inject drugs in Indonesia. These findings indicate the urgent need to scale up harm reduction interventions and align existing programs with IPV prevention and support services, with specific efforts targeting the needs of female injectors.