Opioid Substitution Therapy in Eurasia: How to Increase the Access and Improve the Quality

Tuberculosis, injecting drug use and integrated HIV-TB care: A review of the literature

“…However, a lack of training across specialties, inefficient staffing, inadequate funding and infrastructure, vertically structured health systems, police interference, and limited OST availability remain significant structural challenges to integration (Curtis, 2010;Friedland et al, 2007). In the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, OST is prohibited (Latypov et al, 2012). While pilot OST programmes and their scale-up have begun in other parts of the region, availability remains restricted by the limited number of OST centres, high cost and user fees, long waiting lists, strict eligibility requirements, police harassment, unavailability of take-home doses and interrupted supplies (Open Society Institute, 2008).…”

Modelling the impact of a national scale‐up of interventions on hepatitis C virus transmission among people who inject drugs in Scotland

“…This study illustrates how a country‐level HCV action plan incorporating scale‐up of a range of HCV prevention interventions can reduce HCV incidence markedly. This contrasts sharply with most countries where restrictions in these interventions, due to funding limitations or legal constraints , severely limit their impact on HCV incidence . However, even with high OST and NSP coverage, the impact achieved in Scotland still falls short of the World Health Organization's strategy for reducing HCV incidence by 90% , highlighting that additional interventions are required to eliminate HCV.…”

Illicit drugs in Central Asia: What we know, what we don’t know, and what we need to know

“…In fact, each of these "pillar institutes" presents a separate medical power structure with separate hierarchies and communication lines. Although their number is growing, harm reduction services continue to reach only a minority of PWID (FWID in particular) and other vulnerable populations (El-Bassel, Gilbert, et al, 2014), and, as previously noted, OST has been introduced only recently and remains grossly underutilised in this region (Grund, Latypov, & Harris, 2013;Latypov, Bidordinova, & Khachatrian, 2012;Latypov et al, 2014;Parsons et al, 2014;Zabransky et al, 2014). Several authors suggested that integration of TB services, HIV care, and drug treatment is needed urgently for an efficient and coordinated response (Beyrer et al, 2009;Cox et al, 2004;El-Bassel, Gilbert, et al, 2013;Schluger et al, 2013) and efforts towards more integrated service provision are underway in Central Asia, supported by the WHO, ICRC, MSF, PSI and other international organisations (Cox et al, 2004;Grund et al, 2012).…”