21 participant from 13 countries visited Kyiv, Ukraine, on September 25-29, to start Harm Reduction Academy course which is developing global leadership in harm reduction. Ukraine has been purposefully chosen as one of the world’s biggest and efficient harm reduction programs that allowed to reverse the pace of HIV epidemic in injecting users and the country as a whole.
HIV epidemics is growing among PWID in the world – 10% of new infections in 2015 were through dirty needles when injecting drugs. Although there are effective and proven practices to respond to drug use driven HIV and HCV epidemics recommended WHO – clean needles, substitution therapy and ART for HIV-plosive persons – these services are available to only 10% of the estimated global population of people who are injecting drugs. Harm Reduction Academy appeared as response to the critical lack of access to key services with ambition to generate leadership, technical knowledge and action to mainstream the interventions for people using drugs and end epidemics of HIV, HCV and TB.
The Academy started in 2016 and since then it has reopened doors to 4th group of participants this week. The students and alumni are public health professionals, national and local government workers, civil society, community, police – totally from 18 countries of the world. In the course of 3 weekly Modules they get exposed the themes of harm reduction services and interventions, data and research, drug policy and community mobilization. Combination of learning an practical exposure to programs in 3 of the hosting countries – Ukraine, Kenya and India/Malaysia – allow to receive international understanding of harm reduction and equip students for action in their home countries.
Thanks to the participation in the academy, some significant progress has been made in developing city responses in Kyiv and Odesa, conducting international police dialogues on TB and harm reduction, initiating interventions on HIV response among people injecting drugs in Kenya.
We are really grateful for our supporters and donors, Stop TB Partnership and EQUIP project, Centre of Public Health and NGOs that kindly welcomed our visitors in Kyiv. Next module will take place in November in Mombasa, Kenya