Tag: Harm Reduction International

Webinar on data

Posted on by Milutin

The Drug Policy Network South Wast Europe hosted a webinar to present the recently published data related to harm reduction and HIV/AIDS in South East Europe on 26 November 2024. Besides presenting the data, it was an opportunity to discuss ways in which data should be more reliable and how to integrate data collected by civil society organisations in govrenmental reporting.

Following the welcome address by Nebojša Đurasović, DPNSEE President, we had excellent presentations:

  • Global State of Harm Reduction report – presented by Colleen Daniels, Deputy Director and Public Health Lead, Harm Reduction International (2024 available here>>>)
  • Harm Reduction in South East Europe – Marios Atzemis, DPNSEE Board member (available here>>>)
  • Civil Society Monitoring of Harm Reduction in Europe – Iga Jeziorska, Senior Research Officer, Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network (available here>>>)
  • HIV/AIDS surveillance data for South East Europe (data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control – ECDC) – Milutin Milošević, Executive Director, DPNSEE (available here>>>)

In addition, DPNSEE had sent data by countries and territories to its member organisations and governmental institutions. You can also download them here:

Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Greece Kosovo*

Montenegro North Macedonia Romania Serbia Slovenia Turkey

DPNSEE informed that the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control – ECDC will publish the HIV/AIDS surveillance in Europe 2024 (2023 data) report on 28 November at https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/. DPNSEE will process the new data and prepare new visuals in early 2025.

Reducing incarceration will reduce harm

Posted on by Milutin

The Harm Reduction International published the briefing The Harms of Incarceration: The evidence base and human rights framework for decarceration and harm reduction in prisons. It provides advocates with the evidence base and human rights framework for decarceration and the provision of harm reduction services in prisons.

The document provide evidence that:

  • The first step in reducing harm associated with incarceration is to reduce reliance on incarceration itself.
  • Providing harm reduction is a human rights obligation.
  • Harm reduction services in prisons are an essential, effective and safe public health measure.
  • People in prison are severely underserved by harm reduction services.

The highlights of the briefing inslude:

Over 11 million people are imprisoned worldwide today, the highest number ever recorded. One in five people in prison worldwide is held for drug offences, and 90% of people who inject drugs will be incarcerated at some point in their life. People in prison are at greater risk of HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and COVID-19. When they are released from prison, their risk of overdose increases by up to 69-times.

People in prison retain their human rights, which includes their right to health. By withholding health services such as harm reduction from them, states are violating this right. In some cases, withholding essential services like opioid agonist therapy amounts to torture. The UN Special Rapporteur on Health, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Nelson Mandela Rules on the treatment of prisoners all oblige states to provide health services in prisons.

Harm reduction works. Robust evidence shows that harm reduction services reduce transmission of HIV and viral hepatitis, reduce risk behaviours, reduce deaths from all causes, and can even reduce chances of people coming back to prison. This is why the World Health Organisation, UNAIDS and UN Office on Drugs and Crime all support harm reduction in prisons.

Even though states are obliged to provide the same standard of healthcare inside and outside prisons, when it comes to harm reduction, they do not do so. In nearly a third of countries where opioid agonist therapy is available, people in prison have no access. In 88% of countries where needle and syringe programmes operate, there are none in prisons. Even where services are available in prisons, there are frequently barriers that make them inaccessible in practice.

To read full briefing, follow this link>>>.

 

COVID-19 vaccinations for prison populations and staff

Posted on by Milutin

People in prison continue to be left behind in COVID-19 responses despite facing heightened risk of infection and illness due to cramped and unsanitary living conditions and lack of hygiene supplies in many detention facilities, as well as the poorer health status of prison populations compared to the general population. Even in countries with relatively high standards for places of detention, people detained and working in prisons have been infected and died of COVID-19. The latest available figures indicate that as of July 2021, over 575,000 cases have been recorded in prisons and over 4,000 people in prison have died in 47 countries due to COVID-19.

Penal Reform International (PRI) and Harm Reduction International (HRI) carried out the first ever global mapping of policies & practices related to COVID-19 vaccination in prisons across 177 countries.

This report presents the findings of global mapping of COVID-19 national vaccination plans and their roll-out in prisons. It provides analysis on how, and to what extent, prisons are included (and prioritised) in national vaccination plans, and documents the progress to-date in rolling out the vaccine in prisons. In doing so, this report sheds light on a critical aspect of COVID-19 responses in prisons, namely vaccinations, which are an important tool for ensuring that people deprived of liberty – who too often remain invisible to society and at risk of infection or in need of medical care – are not forgotten.

The report is available following this link>>>.

 

On International Human Rights Day, UN drugs body silences UN human rights expert on ground-breaking report

Posted on by Milutin

From the IDPC and Harm Reduction International press release

In an unprecedented, last-minute decision, the lead UN drugs body has blocked the presentation of a report from a group of independent human rights experts that calls out governments for serious human rights abuses committed in the war on drugs.

The UN’s lead drug policy-making body has slammed the door on human rights expert Dr Elina Steinerte, Chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, who was due to present a watershed study on how drug control policies drive an epidemic of arbitrary detention across the world. She has been blocked from addressing the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs today, 10th December, which is coincidentally International Human Rights Day, and her statement has been merely published online. This last-minute decision, which led to a contentious exchange during the session, was reached through an opaque, closed-door process that kept the human rights experts in the dark about their exclusion until today.

The report sheds light on the arrest and incarceration of millions of people around the world for drug-related offences, including for drug use. People who use drugs are also routinely held against their will in so-called ‘rehab centres’, where they are often subject to degrading and inhumane treatment, including forced labour. With today’s decision, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs stands in defiance of the Human Rights Council – the main UN human rights body – which had asked human rights experts to produce the very same report that now has been stonewalled.

The move to block the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s presentation is particularly galling, given that it is happening on International Human Rights Day 2021, held under the themes of equality and non-discrimination. From stop and search practices to mass incarceration or the death penalty, evidence shows that repressive drug policies disproportionately target oppressed and marginalised people across the world, including racialised groups, Indigenous people, people living in poverty, women, and  LGBTQI+ people.

Budget Advocacy Guide

Posted on by Milutin

From the HRI webpage

How money is collected and distributed through public budgets influences the lives of millions of people in every country in the world. Those decisions might ensure food and shelter for many, or deprive others from essential healthcare services. Budget advocacy, which is a tool to influence those decisions, can make an impact on millions of lives.

Essential healthcare includes harm reduction services for people who use drugs. These services – such as needle and syringe programmes (NSP), opioid agonist therapy (OAT), drug consumption rooms (DCRs), overdose prevention with naloxone, and drug checking – protect against HIV, TB and hepatitis C (HCV) and save lives. Not only are they effective, they are cost-effective and cost-saving, and they have a positive impact on individual and community health.

Yet, the provision of these services is critically low. Only 1% of people who inject drugs live in countries with high coverage of both NSP and OAT. The harm reduction response to stimulant use remains underdeveloped, drug checking services are scarce and DCRs only formally operate in 12 countries, all of them located in the Global North. In 2020, only 15 countries permitted peers of people who use drugs to distribute naloxone.

Meanwhile, HIV infections among people who inject drugs continue to rise, accounting for almost half of new infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa in 2019. Prevalence of HCV among people who inject drugs is 50-times higher than among the general population, overdose deaths have skyrocketed in many countries around the world and stimulants use in Asia and sub Saharan Africa is increasing.  Despite the fact that many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) include harm reduction in their national policy documents, few of them actually invest domestic resources in these life-saving services, even where the need is great. This is often due to the criminalisation of people who use drugs, stigma and discrimination. At the last count, only US$188 million was invested in harm reduction in LMICs – just over one tenth of the US$1.5 billion UNAIDS estimates is required for an effective HIV response among people who inject drugs. The majority of this funding comes from international donors.

The Harm Reduction International published a new resource for harm reduction advocates. This guide provides civil society and communities representatives with an introduction to budget advocacy and some tools and strategies to support advocacy for sustainable harm reduction funding.

To read the Guide, follow this link>>>.

 

Global State of Harm Reduction 2020

Posted on by Milutin

Harm Reduction International, an NGO dedicated to reducing the negative health, social and legal impacts of drug use and drug policy, publishes report that provides an independent analysis of harm reduction in the world. Now in it’s the seventh edition, the Global State of Harm Reduction 2020 is the most comprehensive global mapping of harm reduction responses to drug use, HIV and viral hepatitis.

The 2020 report includes:

  • A chapter which looks at the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns on the provision of harm reduction services worldwide
  • Additional thematic chapters on hepatitis C and tuberculosis
  • Examples of progress in harm reduction from across the world
  • Examples of legal and policy changes which impact harm reduction service provision
  • Foreword by Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
  • Data on the number of people who inject drugs and the number of people in prison for drug use globally

The report can be downloaded and read in full or by chapter following this link>>>.

DPNSEE have prepared a table with information on Epidemiology of HIV and viral hepatitis, and harm reduction response in South East Europe.

The document is available in PDF format following this link>>>.

 

Global State of Harm Reduction 2019

Posted on by Milutin

Harm Reduction International, a leading NGO dedicated to reducing the negative health, social and legal impacts of drug use and drug policy, just published their annual The Global State of Harm Reduction biennial report. First published in 2008, it involves a coordinated effort across practitioners, academics, advocates and activists to map global data and responses to drug-related harms. The data presented here has been gathered over the course of 2019 from publicly available sources and in cooperation with our partners around the world.

It is the only report to provide an independent analysis of the state of harm reduction in the world and has become the go-to source on global harm reduction developments for researchers and advocates in our sector and beyond.

The Report indicated that:

  • Since 2018, the total number of countries implementing needle and syringe programmes (NSP) has increased by just one, from 86 to 87.
  • The re-introduction of NSPs in Bulgaria and the first NSP opening in Sierra Leone have been countered by the closure of services in Uganda.
  • No new countries have begun implementing opioid substitution therapy (OST) programmes since 2018.

We extracted the data on the situation in countries of South East Europe:

To get full information from the report, follow this link>>>

Should you find any inaccuracies, please contact Harm Reduction International at office@hri.global

United Nations & world leaders condemned for failure on drug policy, health and human rights

Posted on by Milutin

329 NGOs call for global leadership to halt global public health emergency and to end egregious human rights violations against people who use drugs.

As the 26th International Harm Reduction Conference comes to a close, hundreds of health professionals, academics, drug policy and human rights experts, frontline workers and people who use drugs released a statement calling on world leaders to urgently address the health and human rights crisis among people who use drugs.

Signatory NGOs shed light on the alarming public health emergency faced by people who use drugs. Between 2009 and 2015, the number of drug-related deaths rose by a worrying 60%. In 2015 alone, this culminated in a total of 450,000 deaths – an estimated 50 deaths every hour. The target to halve the incidence of HIV among people who inject drugs by 2015, set eight years ago, was spectacularly missed by 80%, and HIV prevalence increased by one third among people who inject drugs over the same period. Furthermore, globally, six in ten people who use drugs are living with hepatitis C, while 168,000 people who use drugs were reported to have died of an overdose in 2015 alone.

These health harms are preventable. The evidence, presented at the Conference this week, shows that harm reduction and human rights-centred drug policies can save lives, prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, and promote the dignity and empowerment of people who use drugs. But this requires leadership from both governments and the UN.

Naomi Burke-Shyne, Executive Director of Harm Reduction International (HRI), said: ‘The evidence for harm reduction is indisputable. It is nothing short of disgraceful that governments continue to fail to support and invest in health services for some of the most marginalised people’.

The joint NGO statement also expresses serious concerns over the ability of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to adequately lead the UN response on this issue. By its very mandate and construction, the UNODC remains more attuned to the law enforcement response to drugs. As a result, UNODC leadership has consistently failed to unequivocally champion harm reduction, human rights and decriminalisation, and has lost further creditability with repeated silence in face of egregious human rights violations. Today, people who use drugs continue to be victims of incarceration, compulsory detention, denial of access to healthcare, corporal punishment, institutionalised violence, stigma and discriminations, and – in the most extreme cases – extrajudicial killings.

In response to the vacuum of political leadership, NGOs conveying in Porto have called for global leadership to protect the human rights of a ‘population under attack’ and demanded that these unacceptable human rights abuses to come to an end.

Ann Fordham, Executive Director of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), stated: ‘just over ten years left for countries to meet their global commitment to champion health, reduce inequalities, and provide access to justice for all, as enshrined in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, there has never been a more urgent need to strengthen political leadership at all levels. Faced with the current crisis, complacency can no longer be tolerated’.

Porto welcomes the 26th Harm Reduction International Conference

Posted on by Milutin

The 26th Harm Reduction International Conference (HR19) will be held in Porto, Portugal from 28 April to 1 May 2019. The Conference is organised by the Harm Reduction International and Agência Piaget para o Desenvolvimento (APDES) – a Portuguese non-profit association promoting sustainable development.

 

 

 

 

 

Held once every two years in a different country around the world, the Harm Reduction International Conference is the only global meeting for knowledge-sharing, networking, and discussion of best practices in the field of harm reduction. The last conference in Montreal in 2017 was attended by more than 1000 delegates from over 70 countries, including medical and policy experts, harm reduction practitioners, campaigners, and people who use drugs.

On Tuesday 30 April, at the Concurrent 16: Lost in Transition: Harm Reduction in Central and Eastern Europe, our Yuliya Georgieva from the Center for Humane Policy will speak about, Lost in Transition-Bulgaria struggling to ensure harm reduction activities after Global Fund withdraw while Nebojša Đurasović will present The only one harm reduction program that survived in Serbia – Experience of the Association Prevent.

Those who shall participate in the Conference are very much welcome to join this session.

The programme of the Conference is available following this link>>>

People before politics

Posted on by Milutin

Ahead of the 26th Harm Reduction International conference, Harm Reduction International has launched a Call to Action on harm reduction funding and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria 6th replenishment.

Funding and political support for harm reduction is in crisis in many countries around the world. Harm reduction is evidence-based, cost effective and has a positive impact on individual and community health. While harm reduction is far broader than HIV prevention, this call to action centres on galvanising urgent action to secure a strong 6th replenishment of the Global Fund, in recognition of the significant impact of HIV and TB on people who use drugs.

The Global Fund aims to raise at least US$14 billion at its 6th replenishment, which will be invested from 2020-22. We believe that more funding is required and support the call of the Global Fund Advocates Network (GFAN) for a replenishment of $18 billion. This will enable the Global Fund to step up the fight to end HIV, TB and malaria, and we urge Global Fund donors to be ambitious in their pledges. A strong and fully-funded Global Fund is vital to the harm reduction response and to delivering on government commitments to end AIDS by 2030.

The Call is on

  • Governments, philanthropic donors and the private sector to step up and fully fund the Global Fund, to make ambitious pledges to ensure the US$18 billion target is reached.
  • Governments to put “People before politics” and ensure that people who use drugs are not left behind in the fight to end AIDS by 2030
  • The Global Fund Board to safeguard catalytic investment funds, regardless of replenishment outcome, in order to sustain life-saving services for people who inject drugs and to incentivise domestic investment in harm reduction.

You can read the Call to Action following this link>>>

You can add your organisation’s name to this call to action via the form here>>>

You can share the Call to Action with your networks/other organisations and on social media, using this tweet