Creator: Healthy Options Project Skopje (HOPS)
Description: HOPS continues to raise awareness about the seriousness of the lack of treatment programs for resocialization and rehabilitation for children who use drugs, which provides their complete reintegration into society. HOPS is concerned about the dynamics of the Ministry of Health, who works on the manufacture of the protocol for the treatment of children using drugs. The protocol has been in preparation since 2012 and has still not been established. Although the current state with the number of children using drugs every year is getting worse, there is no adequate response from relevant institutions.
Creator: Healthy Options Project Skopje (HOPS)
Description: On the 30th of September, The First National Drug Policy Conference took place in Skopje, organized by HOPS. Fifty participants from Macedonia and other countries, among them the National Drug Coordinator from the Czech Republic, Jindrich Voboril, discussed issues of whether the repressive drug policies give results, whether the decriminalization of drugs is more efficient as a policy, and unique experiences in Macedonia, Czech Republic, Russia and Slovenia.
Creator: Sexual and Health Rights of Marginalized Communities Coalition
Description: The video follows the story of one young drug user that is a patient at the Center for Substitution Therapy. Since the centers for drug addiction treatment in Skopje are full, he has to travel to another town to get his medicine (methadone). With this individual story, the video opens the topic of access, availability and quality of medical services for drug users.
Creator: Eurasian Harm Reduction Network
Description: In this video series from the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network, opiate patients, effected family members and advocates from the UK share their tragic stories about the death of their loved ones due to overdose. The hopeful outlook of their own well-being and others like them is guided by the use of naloxone; a safe, practical and inexpensive solution to countering opiate overdose.
Creator: Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)
Description: HCLU's video advocacy group traveled to Vancouver to for a visit to Insite, the only legally operating injecting facility in North-America. When we arrived to Hastings Street, Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, where Insite is located, the magnitude of the street drug situation was immediately evident. Hundreds of marginalized people are virtually homeless, due in part to the worsening conditions of cheap and crowded group homes. Most people come from other parts of Canada, where the climate is colder and there are no services like Insite.
Creator: Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)
Description: The HCLU visited Moscow in 2011 and produced a movie to promote the work of the Andrey Rylkov Foundation, the only NGO that provides clean needles for drug users in Moscow. The ARF gets no funding from the government. Anya Sarang, the head of ARF, does not give up. She is to send an open letter to Mr. Ivanov proposing to hold a joint press conference to explain their different positions on OST to the media. Despite the hostile political environment, she believes the ARF can survive in a globalized world.
Creator: Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU)
Description: Hungary is on the verge of an HIV epidemic among drug users. Despite the first HIV transmissions among drug users, the largest Hungarian needle and syringe program in the 8th district has been forced to shut down, because of political attacks. The HCLU’s campaign movie shows the inhumane circumstances of drug use in Budapest, and calls for reform of drug policies, including adding supervised injection rooms in the city. We call on viewers to sign an online petition for a drug litter free 8th district.
Creator: ENPUD, Alliance Ukraine
Description:806 patients of the opioid substitution therapy in Crimea were deprived of treatment after OST was prohibited by the Russian authorities in May 2014. As a consequence of this crime the patients just began to... pass away! Two of the 10 people filmed in this video are already dead. In memory of them, Igor Kouzmenko, an OST patient from Simferopol, filmed a unique video recording his friends begging for salvation. How many more victims will be claimed before this terrible mistake is finally recognized?
Creator: ENPUD, Alliance Ukraine
Description:According to UN data, 6,400 persons were killed, 16,000 wounded, and 1,300,000 had to leave their homes as a result of the war in the East of Ukraine since April 2014. Tens of thousands of people were left without treatment, including hundreds of clients of opioid substitution treatment (OST) programs. As of the beginning of June 2015, 275 clients were still receiving their substitution therapy in the warfare zone in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Before the war, over 1,000 people received OST services there. Sites are running out of the Methadone. The stock of Buprenorphine was depleted back in February 2015. The Ukrainian Government hasn’t allowed the delivery of OST narcotic drugs to the uncontrolled territories, and the authorities of “LPR” (Luhansk People’s Republic) decided to abandon OST and close the program. All the efforts of international organizations to ensure supplies of the drugs to Donetsk failed…
Creator: ENPUD, Alliance Ukraine
Description:The International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) condemns Russia’s denial of harm reduction interventions to people who use drugs, both in the Russian Federation, and in illegally annexed Crimea. INPUD’s video, Slow Death in Ukraine, documents some of the on-the-ground impacts of Russia’s annexation of Crimea on people who use drugs, on their health, and on their human rights. It also explores the catastrophic impacts of the ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine.