Stories from the field | The beginning of opioid treatment in the Ukraine

Each topic during this course will conclude with some examples from real-world experiences. In this video, Anthon Basenko will provide you with his personal experiences on how Opioid Treatment was introduced in the Ukraine.

Opioid Agonist Treatment is part of a Harm Reduction package, recommended by UN agencies in regards to an effective HIV response. You will learn more about this from Annette Verster from the WHO in the next topic ‘public health perspective of drug use and harm reduction’.

This step concludes the first topic of the course “What is harm reduction”. We hope you have gained a deeper understanding of what Harm Reduction stands for. As you have noticed, Harm Reduction has strong roots in individual wellbeing and public health. The second topic of this week will look specifically at the pubic health dimension of drug use and harm reduction.

Note; Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST), Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT) and Opioid Treatment are terminology that are used interchangeably. OAT is recently getting the more preferred terminology. (see ‘words matter!’ document attached to step 1.4)