HIV Prevention Interventions for Injecting Drug Users: Lessons Learnt From Asia
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Satellite Meeting at Harm Reduction 2008: IHRA’s 19th International Conference
Barcelona, Spain
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Sunday May 11th 2008
11:00 – 15:30
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Organised by the UN Regional Task Force on Injecting Drug Use and HIV/AIDS for Asia and the Pacific
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Background
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Unsafe injecting drug use is a significant driving factor in the HIV epidemics of several Asian countries. Reducing the sharing of injecting equipment and providing substitutes for injected drugs are the most effective ways to reduce new infections among injecting drug users (IDUs). These approaches can be effective in Asian settings - as examples from China, Vietnam and Bangladesh (among others) demonstrate. However, HIV prevention (as well as HIV treatment and HIV care) services remain politically controversial, and using these services (such as needle exchange projects) often carries the risk of exposing people to police harassment or arrest in some settings. Though many countries in the region are yet to develop a comprehensive prevention, treatment and care package for drug users, some countries have addressed critical issues like high-level political commitment, law, scaling-up of opioid substitution therapy with methadone, providing HIV interventions for IDUs at multiple levels, prison interventions and reaching out to the sexual partners of IDUs. Since there are successful programmes in some countries, countries in the region as well as other parts of the world can benefit from the successful experiences in Asia.
This event will aim to:
1. Discuss different factors that are critical for effective implementation of harm reduction interventions for drug users
2. Discuss challenges and barriers in scaling-up and ways of achieving coverage
3. Showcase models that are successful, with positive outcomes
Further, the following will be discussed:
1. What should be the main elements of a comprehensive prevention, treatment and care package for injecting drug users?
2. Which key stakeholders must be won over to such an approach, and how can that be achieved?
3. What environmental interventions (relating to law enforcement strategies and practices etc) must be put in place to ensure higher coverage and maximum impact? Is this feasible in Asia? What kind of legal approach will support and facilitate effective large-scale programmes?
4. Is it possible to identify, and does it make sense to try and target prevention efforts at populations at risk like the sexual partners of drug users?
5. Should methadone maintenance therapy for injecting drug users be a standard part of HIV prevention strategies in countries where injecting drug use features in the epidemic? If so, what steps should be taken to ensure that this forms part of harm reduction programmes?
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Format
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This event will be split into two sessions – a morning session (11:00-13:00), and an afternoon session (14:00-15.30), with lunch in between. Invited speakers will present on the successful case studies from different countries in the region. Each presentation will be followed by discussion from an invited discussant and from the floor. This event will be well-scripted and coordinated by the UN Regional Task Force on Injecting Drug Use and HIV/AIDS for Asia and the Pacific, and moderated by Mr JVR. Prasada Rao (UNAIDS)
Presentations
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• Scaling-up methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) in China (Speaker TBC)
• Presentation: HIV interventions for drug users at multiple levels: A case study from Indonesia (Speaker TBC)
• Presentation: Initiating methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) in the prisons, Malaysia (Speaker TBC)
• Reaching and providing harm reduction services for drug users and their regular sexual partners: South Asian experience (Speaker TBC)
• "Diffusion of pharmaceutical injecting in South Asia: Challenges in containing the dual epidemic" (Speaker TBC)
• High level political commitment and enacting HIV laws for effective implementation of harm reduction interventions in Vietnam (Speaker TBC)
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