Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

News and Notes

2007; Wiley; Volume: 102; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1360-0443.2007.01749.x

1360-0443

Peter Miller, Susan Savva,

HIV/AIDS Research and Interventions

The UK government has announced that smoking in enclosed public places will be banned in England from 1 July 2007. The ban covers virtually all enclosed public places including offices, factories, pubs and bars but not outdoors or in private homes. From 1 July, pubs and restaurants will have to display prominent ‘no smoking’ signs around their premises. The measure follows similar bans in the Irish Republic and Scotland, as well as a ban in Wales which will commence on 2 April 2007. As with previous smoking bans, opponents say the total ban is ‘draconian’, despite evidence from Scotland and Ireland that there has been no significant overall decrease in the number of people attending licensed premises; in fact, many have shown substantial increases in patronage. Public health bodies, such as the British Lung Foundation and Cancer Research UK, have applauded the government's stand announcing that 1 July would be an ‘historic day’. UK Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said the ban was a ‘huge step forward’ which would save thousands of people's lives, estimating that up to 600 000 people will quit as a result and the ban will protect most of the public from passive smoking. On the same theme, the survey company AC Nielsen has released a report [1] documenting how the Scottish smoking ban is changing the social and cultural context of the pub (Homescan survey of 10 000 households in Great Britain). They report that this has had a positive and profitable upside for publicans. They propose that families and nonsmokers in Scotland are far more willing to spend time and money in pubs over leisurely meals, without the fear of inhaling other people's smoke. ‘Pubs which currently don't serve food should really think hard about doing so in future,’ said Eleni Nicholas, managing director of AC Nielsen UK & Ireland. The survey also found that 56% of people are more likely to visit a pub if it is nonsmoking, and only 15% of people are less likely to visit. RIA Novosti, the Russian News and Information Agency, reports that 8000 deaths were registered from illegal drug use in Russia last year [1]. However, unofficial estimates suggest total drug-related fatalities may be as high as 70 000 per year. The information department at the Federal Drug Control Service presented figures at a national HIV conference, showing that ‘About 70 000 people die of narcotics annually, according to unofficial data. Officially, we lost 8000 people [to drugs] in 2005’. They also reported that as many as 60% of the country's registered HIV carriers had contracted the virus through intravenous drug use. The article reported that there are currently 243 000 registered drug addicts in Russia and that in the past three years their number has been growing by only 0.5% per year, compared with 20–30% over the past decade. The official said the spread of drug abuse could be contained by promoting a drug-free subculture among young people, and suggested that college and university applicants should undergo drug tests before being admitted. If only it were that simple. Russia currently has no methadone or overdose prevention programmes. An article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal has reported that an evaluation of Vancouver's Safer Injecting Facility (InSite) has found a number of public health and community benefits and no evidence of harms. The safer injecting facility was opened in September 2003 to provide a place where people inject pre-obtained illicit drugs under medical supervision and have access to counselling and other community resources. Exemption from prosecution was granted by the Canadian federal government on the condition that a 3-year scientific evaluation of the facility's impacts was conducted. Wood and colleagues 1 summarise the findings from evaluations in those three years. Findings show that the facility has attracted injecting drug users at high risk of HIV infection and drug overdose and that there have been reductions in public drug use, publicly discarded syringes and syringe sharing. They also report that use of the facility has been associated with decreased HIV risk behaviour and increased uptake of addiction treatment services. The program has acted as a central referralmechanism to a wide range of other community resources. In a related commentary, Wainberg 2 calls on the Canadian federal government to continue its support of Vancouver's safer injecting facility and questions its recent decision to eliminate the funding needed for a final evaluation. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has reported it is in partnership with the governments of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to help halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS among injecting drug users and in prison settings 1. The five million dollar project, funded by the Netherlands, will help these countries improve their HIV/AIDS prevention and care. Throughout the four-year project period, UNODC will build partnerships with relevant national and non-governmental institutions to increase access to services and information. UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa claimed that high-risk groups, such as prisoners and injecting drug users, will benefit from new and improved services aimed at minimizing the risks associated with injecting drug use. Attention will also be given to the specific needs of female injecting drug users and of young people. Grassroots organizations and regional networks will play an important role in reaching target groups, whose involvement will be sought in all stages of the project. However, follow-up enquiries regarding the specific content of the projects and whether they used needle and syringe distribution—which Executive Director Costa has not supported in the past in spite of the strong evidence base—went unanswered. Former Hong Kong health chief Margaret Chan has been elected head of the World Health Organization (WHO). Chan's nomination was endorsed by more than two thirds of the UN body's 193-strong membership. She will serve a five-and-a-half year term which began in January. Chan joined the WHO three years ago and rose to Assistant Director General in charge of communicable diseases. In her campaign for the top position, Chan said the agency should ‘collect timely and accurate information’ to deal with health challenges, and pledged to set up a global health observatory. She has expressed a desire to work on chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and against smoking as well as continuing to fight diseases such as polio and HIV. Commentators such as Medecins Sans Frontières have expressed the hope that this appointment will signal WHO reasserting its leadership and ensuring that health becomes an ‘absolute priority’ over trade and industrial demands. Source: Interactive Investor: http://tinyurl.com/ydyova The UK Royal College of General Practitioners Substance Misuse Unit has launched a range of e-modules, originally produced for their Part 1 Certificate in the Management of Drug Misuse. The modules were previously available only to GPs as part of the certificate course, but have now been made free to all on the college website (6). The course has been adapted to meet the needs of other healthcare practitioners, enabling pharmacists, nurses and drug workers to work towards gaining the certificate by accessing the modules. After successfully completing the e-modules, non-GP candidates will be issued with a certificate as evidence of training. They will also be invited to attend a ‘face-to-face’ day designed to teach the practical application of the skills and knowledge contained in the modules, allowing them to complete the full Part 1 Certificate. The SSA's Annual Symposium will be held at the Park Inn, York, UK, on Thursday 15 and Friday 16 November 2007. Themes will include social exclusion, young people and new and online treatments. The Symposium has been held at the same hotel for several years, and delegates have complimented both the helpfulness of the staff and the quality of the catering. York is easily accessible by rail and road, and only a short distance from several international airports. The Park Inn has an ideal, central location—on the bank of the river Ouse. Only a few minutes walk from both the railway station and the centre of York, it is perfect for winter strolls around the beautiful, historic city centre. As well as the invited speakers, giving presentations on the latest research, there will be the opportunity for delegates to present their work, in the form of posters or short oral presentations. Please send your abstracts to: graham.hunt@leedsmh.nhs.uk—if you wish to give an oral presentation, please submit your abstract early. Society members will be entitled to a discount on the standard delegate fee. UK National Drug Treatment Conference. 15–16 March 2007, Novotel London West Hotel and Convention Centre. Conference themes will be social exclusion, detox and aftercare, new treatments, and legal and political issues for drug treatment. Contact: http://www.exchangesupplies.org; tel. +44 (0)1305 262244 European Psychiatry: Science and Art. 15th European Congress of Psychiatry. Madrid, Spain, 17–21 March 2007. Contact: 15th European Congress of Psychiatry, Kenes International, 17 Rue du Cendrier, PO Box 1726, CH-1211 Geneva 1, Switzerland. Tel: +41 22 908 0488, Fax: +41 22 732 2850; e-mail: aep2007@kenes.com; website: http://www.kenes.com/aep2007 1st Annual Conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy. Oslo, Norway, 22–23 March 2007. Inaugural meeting supported by Nordic Council for Alcohol and Drug Research (NAD) and Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research (SIRUS). Contact: Maaria Lindblad, NAD, Annankatu 29 A23, 00100 Helsinki, Finland; email maaria.lindblad@nad.fi Alcohol, Drugs and Criminal Justice—building on experience and looking towards 2008. Second UK national conference for those working within the overlapping fields of offending, drugs and alcohol. University of Warwick, 26–28 March 2007. Contact: Michelle Vatin, conference.consortium@rugbyhouse.org.uk 15th UKPHA Annual Public Health Forum. Organised by the UK Public Health Association. Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Scotland, 28–29 March 2007. Contact: UKPHA conference secretariat, Benchmark Communications Ltd, 14 Blandford Square, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE1 4HZ; tel. +44 (0)919 241 4523; fax +44 (0)191 245 3802; email conference@ukphar.org.uk; website http://www.ukphaconference.org.uk Management of Drug Users in Primary Care. 12th UK National Conference presented by the Royal College of General Practitioners Sex, Drugs and HIV Task Group. Hilton Birmingham Metropole at the National Exhibition Centre. 19–20 April 2007. Contact: Healthcare Events, fax +44 (0)20 8547 2300; website http://www.healthcare-events.co.uk Harm Reduction: coming of age. 18th International Conference on the Reduction of Drug-Related Harm. Warsaw, 13–17 May 2007. IHRC 2007 Secretariat, Conference Consortium, Wiśniowa 50, 3rd floor, 02–520 Warsaw, Poland. Tel: +48 (0) 22 640 82 71; Fax: +48 (0) 22 640 82 71; email: conference@harmreduction2007.org; website http://www.harmreduction2007.org 33rd Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium of the Kettil Bruun Society. 4–8 June 2007, Budapest, Hungary. Call for papers by 15 February 2007. Contact: Conference Secretariat c/o SCOPE Meetings Ltd: Éva Thiry, thiry@sztaki.hu; website http://www.arg.org/kbs/Hungary.html UK National Smoking Cessation Conference. Novotel London West Hotel and Convention Centre, 14–15 June 2007. Third annual conference offering a forum for professional development and knowledge sharing in this rapidly evolving field. http://www.uknscc.org Research Society on Alcoholism Annual Conference. 7–12 July 2007, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Contact: Debra Sharp, Research Society on Alcoholism, 7801 North Lamar Blvd., Suite D-89, Austin, Texas 78752-1038 USA. Tel. +1 512 454 0022; fax +1 512 454 0812, email DebbyRSA@sbcglobal.net; website http://www.rsoa.org Preventing Youngers from Smoking; helping smokers to quit. 9th Annual Conference of SRNT Europe. 3–6 October 2007, Madrid, Spain. Contact: Conference Secretariat, Viajes y Congresos SA, tel. +91 547 3747; fax +91 559 5881; vycongremad@viajesycongresos.com; http://www.viajescongresos.com News and Notes welcomes contributions from its readers. Send your material to Peter Miller, News and Notes Editor, Addiction, National Addiction Centre PO48, 4 Windsor Walk, London SE5 8AF. Fax +44 (0)20 7703 5787; email p.miller@iop.kcl.ac.uk Conference entries should be sent to Susan Savva at susan@addictionjournal.org. Subject to editorial review, we will be glad to print, free of charge, details of your conference or event, up to 75 words and one entry only. Please send your notification three months ahead of time and specify in which issue you would like it to appear.