Harm Reduction Center for Drug Users

The project mainly focuses on the connection between HIV/AIDS and drug injection. The objectives of the centre are to: raise consciousness and prompt actions amongst policy makers, parliamentarians, government officials, and local authorities; conduct questionnaires and surveys with drug users; maintain contacts and improve collaboration with other networks, non-governmental organisations, agencies, media and governmental structures; and increase advocacy on drug users' reproductive and sexual health as well as HIV/AIDS prevention and drug abuse.

To do this The Aksion Plus organisation through the Harm Reduction Center has undertaken the following activities;

• research through questionnaires and an assessment of the actual situation in Albania. This included a study done about drug use in the high schools;
• outreach programmes during which the drug users were contacted in the field, information, education, communication, the distribution of clean syringes and condoms, and the collection of the used syringes;
• Hot-line counseling with drug users and their parents;
• group therapy with the users that come to Center and sometimes with their relatives;
• publication of the brochures, pamphlets, posters, leaflets and other informing materials;
• preparation and training of the peer educators, of the Center’ staff and of the volunteers, of Social Work and Psychology Faculties students;
• ongoing contacts with the electronic and the published media, with the televisions, radio interviews, articles in the newspapers such as the one being published by the World Health Organization;
• expanding the network and the partnership with non-governmental and governmental structures, with agencies and organisations;
• sports activities, excursions, literary gatherings, English language courses, yoga courses, artists’ that use drugs promotions and concerts, etc;
• organising meetings, round tables, and training sessions with local structures and police to advocate and promote harm reduction as well as the right of drug users to benefit from state services;
• distributing of information, education and communication materials designed for youth that promote healthy sexual behaviours as well as injecting drug use harm reduction;
• initiating peer education covering different areas such as HIV/AIDS prevention, drug harm reduction, behaviour change communication, and healthy life styles;
• exploring possibilities for using traditional communication channels such as community theatre groups, school journals and youth parliaments to convey healthy lifestyles messages;
• establishing a drug user’s organisation.

Aksion Plus identifies advocacy as an important part of The Harm Reduction Center's work, in order to encourage groups and structures to be actively involved in the issue. The Center aims to encourage decision makers to see drug use as a serious problem and become actively involved in tackling the problem. This has included open meetings with politicians, local authorities, health & education personnel and other people involved in the field of HIV/AIDS & drugs, in order to define future steps for cooperation. They hold seminars and use media to explain the nature of drug use and the importance of harm reduction to policy makers, heads of ministries, opinion leaders, other NGOs, school governors, teachers, psychologists, social workers, church leaders and mass communicators.

Drug Use, HIV/AIDS, Youth

According to Aksion Plus, drug use in Albania and related risks have taken tragic proportions. They say that state institutions, law enforcement, and medical services officials do not publicly accept the existence of the problem. The level of HIV risk behaviour among injecting users is significantly high. The increasing number of injection drug users (IDUs) and the lack of knowledge of safer drug use skills, contribute to the problem. At the same time, Aksion Plus has found that the social attitudes toward drug users and people living with HIV are quite restrictive, and the involvement of NGOs in the general harm reduction policy is insufficient.