A Call for Sustainable Leadership: Charting the Harm Reduction Roadmap

Harm reduction in Malaysia has seen growth from the year 2005 to where we stand now in 2015. Collaborative efforts between the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Prisons Department, the Malaysian AIDS Council and many nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have allowed access to Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST) and Needle Syringe Exchange to 74,816 and 85,593 clients cumulatively.

On 18th October 2015, in the margins of the 24th International Harm Reduction Conference in Kuala Lumpur, stakeholders in Malaysian harm reduction programs, including the Malaysian Ministry of Health, the National Anti-Drugs Agency, the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERiA), addiction psychiatrists, the Addiction Medicine Association Malaysia (AMAM), the Royal Malaysian Police, the Centre for Drug Research, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and people who use drugs convened to discuss the Next Leap Forward in Harm Reduction in Malaysia. This report documents their discussions and makes several key recommendations.