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CURTAIN UP ON FILM FESTIVAL
The Other Choice
is one of the document-
aries on show this afternoon, at the
seventh IHRA film festival. Following a
patient who is on methadone maintenance
treatment, it explores substitution therapy
in Kathmandu, Nepal, showing it as
beneficial in the prevention of HIV/Aids as
well as the treatment of drug addiction.
Film showings run from 12.30–18.00 in the
cinema, at auditorium level.
A community film festival will also run
in the evenings (Monday 18.00–21.15 and
Tuesday 17.15–20.30) at the Foundation
for Art and Creative Technology (FACT),
88 Wood Street, Liverpool L1 4DQ.
Monday 26 April 2010 – DAY ONE –
Daily Update
– 5
This year’s conference returns to its first ever
venue, Liverpool, to celebrate its 21st birthday.
The Daily Update arrives in a city with a proud
heritage of both public health and harm reduction
brought in as executive director.
At this point IHRA relied mainly on
personal contacts and networks, but had
been very successful in promoting harm
reduction to international agencies. ‘What I
wanted to do was capitalise on IHRA’s
position and give it the capacity to be a big
player within harm reduction globally,’ says
Professor Stimson.
He set ‘strategic proactive advocacy’ –
not just responding to when things happen,
but also looking forward – and ‘quality policy
analysis’ as among key objectives. He also
wanted to emphasise that harm reduction
applies to all psychoactive drugs including
alcohol and tobacco, an objective that hasn’t
yet been as successful as he would like. A
grant from the UK Department for
International Development in 2006 helped
develop the strands of policy analysis,
advocacy and working with partners.
Back in 2004 IHRA’s entire annual
budget was £120,000 which meant only
part-time posts for Stimson and his
colleague Jennifer Curcio. This year the
budget is £1.2m, which doesn’t include the
separate conference budget and finance for
joint projects, such as work in the Middle
East with the World Health Organization.
But as the budget has increased, so has
the task ahead. ‘We’re always looking for
where we can have the biggest impact and
make the biggest inroads,’ says Prof
Stimson. ‘The biggest insight for me has
been the mileage we can get by focusing
on human rights.’
Equally prominent this year has been a
project to map the state of global harm
reduction and the amount of money going
into it. IHRA’s latest report shows that
global funding of harm reduction amounts
to around just three US cents a day, leading
to the conclusion that spending needs to
increase about 20-fold.
‘It means we might need to think about
harm reduction in totally different ways,’ he
reflects, adding: ‘Every year, every month
there are new ideas about how to push
harm reduction forward, and that’s how it’s
been for the last 20 years. Every year there
are new things happening – it just doesn’t
stand still.’
making it work.’ Working with his multi-
lingual team, he arranges translation into
at least two languages other than English.
‘This year we have Russian to maintain our
constituency from Central and Eastern
Europe, and French for the large number of
French-speaking countries and for the
target group of Middle East and North
Africa, where we hope to take the
conference next year.
The content of the event has taken
another step forward to keep up with dele-
gates’ expectations. This year there is more
filming, including of poster presentations,
the launch of the International HarmReduc-
tion Academy, and an interactive ‘dialogue
space’ which will make the exhibition area
‘a real living part of the conference’.
‘We try to mould the conference around
the needs of the people who attend it,’ said
Mr Costall, and this principle guides the way
the entire programme is put together.
Sessions are run in manageable time slots to
the framework of a working day, with freq-
uent refreshment breaks. Alongside provid-
ing adequate variety, he is very conscious of
not wanting to overpack the programme.
While there is six hours of solid pro-
gramme content each day, plus the oppor-
tunity to network onsite (and offsite, with
the assistance of the local Mersey Partner-
ship), he is aware of the difficult balance:
‘You don’t want to fill people’s day from
the moment they take their head off the
pillow until their head hits the pillow again
at night. I’ve been to places where it’s a
badge of honour to go to something from
seven in the morning until 11 at night. But
I’m not the George S Patten of conference
organisation – I don’t believe people
should die for it.’
He would like people to come away from
the conference with the feeling they’ve
learned something, he says. But above all, he
wants them to enjoy it and participate fully
in what he believes has become an ‘influen-
tial global village’more than a conference.
‘I always remember what Patrick O’Hare
said to me in Vancouver at the 2006
conference, when I was thinking about the
enormity of the task of doing it in Warsaw,’
he recalls. ‘He said “whatever you do Paddy,
never forget we’re in showbusiness! And if
people aren’t happy, they won’t come back.”’