By SK.Vyas
Kapurthala/Jalandhar, Feb 15,219: Punjab Government and India HIV/AIDS Alliance convene a multi-stakeholder meeting at Navkiran Centre – Kapurthala; commit to a comprehensive response for Women Who Use Drugs. The programme is being developed as a model initiative under a Global Fund-supported grant in Asia on Harm Reduction
Wednesday, 15 February 2019 (Kapurthala, Punjab, India)–Under the direction of the Additional Chief Secretary – Punjab, Shri Satish Chandra and in partnership with the India HIV/AIDS Alliance a multistakeholder meeting was today organized at the Kapurthala Civil Hospital based Navkiran Centre. The meeting was convened by the Additional Secretary Health, Government of Punjab – Srinivasan. Others present at the meeting included the leadership of line ministries and departments of the state government and the district administration. The meeting included a welcome speech by Dr. Umesh Chawla – Director Policy and Programme – India HIV/AIDS Alliance. He highlighted the importance of working with women who use drugs and his organization’s commitment to support the Government of Punjab for developing a comprehensive response centered on health and human rights.
His presentation was followed by a detailed PowerPoint presentation by Kunal Kishore who leads the Harm Reduction Programme at India HIV/AIDS Alliance which includes a 7 country programme supported by Global Fund titled “Harm Reduction in Asia” which is providing funding and technical assistance for developing and implementing a model harm reduction programme that aims to comprehensively respond to health and social concerns of women who use or inject drugs. He highlighted that there is a lot of evidence available from the world, regionally in Asia and India likewise which indicate a fast emerging trend of drug use amongst women which required an immediate response in line with the “comprehensive package definition” outlined by the World Health Organisation. He stressed the need for customizing the service delivery package to suit the needs of the women who use drugs in India so that there is evidence for the government to replicate the model and scale up the services. He congratulated Srinivasan on behalf of the Ministry of Health, Government of Punjab for the support and leadership which ensured that all the critical harm reduction services (9 services) are directly offered to clients which makes it a unique initiative and one of its kind in Asia. He highlighted the contributions of Dr. Sandeep Bhola who was instrumental in making services attractive for the clients by way of giving them choice of medicines like methadone and buprenorphine both on a inpatient and OPD basis to make the approach client friendly which in turn ensured reduction is risky behaviors that put them at greater risk of infections like HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Opioid overdose.
Dr Sandeep Bhola, who is the project lead and point person for the initiative eluded on the need for prioritizing women as a key group. He highlighted women face unique issues when it comes to substance use, in part influenced by:
sex—differences based on biology
gender—differences based on culturally defined roles for men and women
He shared findings from studies on substance use and explained women themselves describe unique reasons for using drugs, including controlling weight, fighting exhaustion, coping with pain, and attempts to self-treat mental health problems. Women can respond to substances differently. For example, they may have more drug cravings and may be more likely to relapse after treatment and highlighted the dual risk owing to emerging drug use trend amongst women in Punjab and a lack of
Using published data from India and the world he also on emphasized the need for having better outreach strategies to link women clients to the health and harm reduction services. Sharing good practices from Kapurthala he stressed that effective service delivery was possible due to the enabling environment and community friendly legislations of the Punjab government which ensures that there is availability and access to critical other services also such as test and treat for Viral Hepatitis, HIV/AIDS and TB including in prisons.
The meeting also included remarks from the Assistant IG of STF Mr Mukhwinder Singh Bhullar who spoke about the STF efforts on drug control in the state and the need for coordination with other departments particularly health and social welfare to ensure a balance in response and to ensure that the law enforcement efforts don’t interfere with those who need health services.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate Sanjeev Kundi then spoke about the provisions under the NDPS act for people who use drugs and women in particular, He highlighted how the number of women offenders booked under NDPS act had increased in recent years in his experience and stressed that of those many require health and human rights-based approaches not incarceration and implementation of the various sections of the law require enforcement agencies to be more sensitized. He also spoke about the role of the District Legal Services Authority in protecting the rights and welfare of people who use drugs and requiring help.
On behalf of the district administration, the ADC Rahul Chaba spoke about the importance of expanding treatment efforts with a focus on the young and the vulnerable. He used the examples from the tobacco control programme to explain how the demand for drugs was increasing including especially for women. He congratulated the India HIV/AIDS Alliance and the Nav Kiran Centre under the aegis of the Punjab Government for initiating the comprehensive package interventions in Kapurthala. He emphasized the need to expand such initiatives in the future to make the services available to more women.
Finally the chief guest for the event V Srinivasan spoke on behalf of the Punjab Government and began by reassuring support on behalf of his Ministry and leadership. He congratulated the organizers for the event and shared that the Punjab Government would like to use the evidence from the model intervention for future planning and implementation. He offered support of the government to share the learnings from the Kapurthala center for replication of the programme at the national and international levels.
Finally, the meeting ended with the chief guest dispensing a dose of buprenorphine to a female client enrolled under the programme.
Civil Surgeon Dr. Balwant Singh and others were present.