HARM REDUCTION
Dr. Orhan Ibragim-zade, President of AzerMSA
was
elected the member of Steering
Committee of CEE-HRN
Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies
that reduce negative consequences of drug use, incorporating
a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use to
abstinence. Harm reduction strategies meet drug users "where
they're at," addressing conditions of use along with
the use itself.
Because harm reduction demands that interventions and policies
designed to serve drug users reflect specific individual and
community needs, there is no universal definition of or formula
for implementing harm reduction. However, Harm Reduction Concept
considers the following principles central to harm reduction
practice.
- Accepts, for better and for worse, that licit and illicit
drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize
its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn
them.
- Understands drug use as a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon
that encompasses a continuum of behaviors from severe abuse
to total abstinence, and acknowledges that some ways of
using drugs are clearly safer than others.
- Establishes quality of individual and community life and
well-being--not necessarily cessation of all drug use--as
the criteria for successful interventions and policies.
- Calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of
services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities
in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant
harm.
Ensures that drug users and those with a history of drug
use routinely have a real voice in the creation of programs
and policies designed to serve them.
- Affirms drugs users themselves as the primary agents of
reducing the harms of their drug use, and seeks to empower
users to share information and support each other in strategies
which meet their actual conditions of use.
Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism,
social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination
and other social inequalities affect both people's vulnerability
to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related
harm.
- Does not attempt to minimize or ignore the real and tragic
harm and danger associated with licit and illicit drug use.
More information about Harm Reduction could be found at the
site of
International Harm Reduction
Association
Central & Eastern European
Harm Reduction Network
|
