ECAD Sweden continues active networking with ECAD Russian branch despite political disputes. Many cities still wonder "What`s in it for me?" reflecting on ECAD cooperation with Russia. Well, here might be an aswer for you... 

Two prevention experts, Sven Persson and Marcus Häggström from Swedish county of Gävleborg, represented ECAD at a national conference for Russian drug abuse treatment in Western Sibiria, near the city of Irkutsk, on July 21-22.

The conference was arranged by ECAD national representative, Russian Narcology League, with Mrs. T. Klimenko, Russian Vice Minister for Health, E. Koshkina, Chief for Drug Addiction Treatment Department at the Ministry of Health and Eugeny Brun, head of Russian Narcology League, setting the scene.

A lot of effort had been invested in streamlining addiction treatment in Russia recently, however, much more should be done to improve outpatient treatment, prevention strategies and rehabilitation techniques, were the main opening remarks. Today, Russian addiction treatment experts research a lot on efficient evaluation methods as a part of modernizing national addiction treatment system.

Since 1980-ies, Russia had been a part of a conscious drug policy formation process and yet, there is little consensus on a common strategy for the enormous country by now. Today, according to the UN World Drug Report, 21% of all drugs produced in Afghanistan penetrate Russian market. Russia has the highest percentage of heroin addicts in the world,over 90% of all drug users in the country are heroin users.

Russian drug policy is relatively often critised in the media, however few of the critical voices actually visited farther regions of Russia, close to China, Japan and Mongolia. Drug addiciton issues are not municipal, regional or national matters, these are and should be dealt with globally, across the borders. Therefore, many Swedish cities have been networking for more than 10 years with their Russian counterparts.



After being interviewed by 2 Russian TV channels, Sven Persson and Marcus Häggström of ECAD Swedish network proudly present a report on the state of affairs in West Sibiria down here.

Download the story in Swedish (PDF)

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