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DAILY UPDATE
DAY FOUR
Thursday 7 April 2011
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF PAKISTAN MEMBER
Dr Donya Aziz will address this afternoon’s closing
session. A former parliamentary secretary for
population welfare, she is also chair of the health sub-
committee on HIV/AIDS.
IHRA estimates that there are around 125,000
people who inject drugs in Pakistan, and there are
now needle and syringe programmes in place.
‘The programmes have been running for quite a
while but they’re limited to urban areas where
communities of IDUs have been identified,
especially those areas where we’ve had
concentrated epidemics of HIV,’ she says.
‘Unfortunately there is also a realisation that the
IDU communities are incredibly mobile, and usually
what happens is when the government or a
specific police officer needs to show themselves
doing something really great they’ll just crack
down on the users, who then flee all over the place
and it’s difficult to re-engage them.’
The HIV/AIDS sub-committee has been trying to
persuade the police to put a stop to these
activities, she says, with some signs of success,
while a pilot opioid substitution programme
approved for 2010-11 had to be postponed as a
result of the country’s devastating floods. ‘The
floods took place in the first month of our financial
year, and so much of the money had to be diverted
to deal with the 20m displaced persons. We
probably won’t see the pilot programme materialise
this year, but next year is a possibility.’
The fact that harm reduction is clearly making
inroads into Pakistan is perhaps at odds with the
view that some people might have of the country.
‘Pakistan is one of those countries where we have
stringent laws on the books, but the
implementation of those laws is very lax, and in
some cases non-existent,’ she points out.
‘What we’ve seen is that if you’re willing to
work below the radar and advocate with and
lobby government officials in a non-public manner
then they’re much more receptive than when
there’s a huge media splash – in those cases
everyone tends to revert to the more conservative
line that they know is the safest one to tow. So
Harm reduction succeeds
below the radar in Pakistan
HIGHLIGHTS
Thursday 7 April
MAJOR SESSIONS
9.00-10.30
Naloxone
Saving lives with overdose
prevention programmes.
Risk environments of drug
use and sex work
Harm reduction initiatives for
diverse and difficult contexts.
Economics and effectiveness
A look at harm reduction models
of investment.
11.00-12.30
Families, parenthood and drugs
The social and economic impact of
drug use on families.
New trends and patterns of
drug use
Issues around mephedrone and
prescribed opiates.
Human rights
Impact assessments and safe-
guarding against abusive practices.
15.30-16.45
Closing session
John-Peter Kools
, chair of IHRA
Elie Aaraj
, director of SIDC and
MENAHRA
Donya Aziz
of the National
Assembly, Pakistan
Awards ceremony
, featuring the
National Rolleston Award, Travis
Jenkins Awards and the Film
Festival Award.
Paddy Costall
, Conference
Consortium
Rick Lines
, IHRA
Handover to
John Ryan
of Anex,
Australia, for next year’s conference.
Continued on p3