The session "Harm reduction for people who inject drugs in Europe: findings from three major European projects" will take place on Wednesday, October 25, at the Lisbon Addictions 2017, the second European Conference on Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies, which is a multidisciplinary conference that provides a forum for networking across the addictions.

This session will focus on harm reduction services in Europe for PWID, presenting new findings from these three major European projects on the following topics:

  1. Low-threshold settings are a model for providing effective interventions for PWID. This study looks at the number of PWID tested for HIV and HCV in low-threshold settings, in comparison with the number tested in hospitals, in Hungary and Latvia (HA-REACT).
  2. Worldwide, more than ten million people are incarcerated at any given time and the release of prisoners has huge implications for public health. We present a global systematic review of the effects of prison-based needle and syringe programmes on prisoners’ health (HA-REACT).
  3. In Ireland, there are large numbers of PWID who are HCV positive but do not have access to direct-acting antivirals (DAAs). This study investigated the level of care that HCV-positive PWID receive in six larger Dublin drug treatment centres and the implications this care has for their PWID (HepCare).
  4. Study on PWID in community-based voluntary counselling and testing services, describing their: epidemiological profile, test seeking behaviour, and linkage to care when diagnosed with HIV. These data could help improve early HIV diagnosis for PWID (COBATEST network).
  5. Pilot project on condom distribution through vending machines and prison staff in one prison as the first evaluation of condom distribution in a Czech prison. (HA-REACT).
  6. Survey results on the main barriers to harm reduction services for PWID in Europe (HA-REACT).

This session will be chaired by Mika Salminen, Finland, with following speakers: Alexandra Gurinova, Germany; Heino Stöver, Germany; Jack Lambert, Ireland; Laura Fernandez Lopez, Spain; Viktor Mravcik, Czech Republic; Jeffrey Lazarus, Denmark.

The conference programme is availiable at lisbonaddictions.eu