International Conference on Global Health and Public Health Education

The International Conference on Global Health and Public Health Education, organized by the CUHK School of Public Health and Primary Care, will take place a the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The Open Society Foundations Global Drug Policy program will be holding a satellite session entitled "Drug Policies: A Public Health Issue", on 27 October from 14:00 to 16:00.

Description of the satellite session:

In many countries people with drugs dependencies do not have access to evidence-based treatment or harm reduction services. Countries with punitive drugs policies frequently have a high HIV prevalence in injecting drug users. In Thailand, for example, over 40% of injecting drug users are HIV positive. At the same time, restrictive drugs policies significantly limit the availability of opiate-based pain relief to the broad population.

A special issue by The Lancet on HIV in people who use drugs (July 2010) included a call to scale up evidence-based treatment for drug use, describing it as a fundamental right to health and an urgent public health priority.

Heads of UNAIDS and the Global Fund to fight HIV, Malaria, and Tuberculosis signed the 2010 Vienna Declaration that called for drugs policies to be rooted in science. In June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy – a group of high-profile cultural and political figures that include four ex-presidents, a former UN Secretary General, and a Nobel Prize laureate - called for governments to ‘replace the criminalization and punishment of people who use drugs with the offer of health and treatment services to those who need them’.

This session will include a discussion on what evidence-based drug treatment and harm reduction are, and how public health interventions can be supported by national drugs policies. It will also draw attention to international advocacy campaigns in support of drugs policies that are based on science, and to cases of national drug policies’ reforms which succeeded in addressing public health crises like HIV/AIDS epidemics.

Co-chairs:

• Professor Joseph Lau, Head of the Division of Health Improvement at the School of Public Health and Primary Care
• Karolina Walecik, Program Officer, Global Drug Policy program, Open Society Foundations

Speakers:

• Kanna Hayashi, Urban Health Research Initiative, British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. Topic: Informing Drug Policy in Thailand: Experiences with the Mitsampan Community Research Project
• Mohd. Zaman Khan, Malaysian AIDS Council. Topic: Drug Policies in Asia: A Public Health Issue – The Malaysian Setting
• Karyn Kaplan, Thai Treatment Action Group. Topic: Drug Users and the Legal Framework: The Failure of the War on Drugs and its Negative Impact in the Region from a Community Perspective
• Takayuki Harada, Associate Professor, Mejiro University, Japan. Topic: Japan’s Drug Policy: From Punishment to Treatment

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