Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January, 2018

I Know What I Did Last Year: “My Summer of PEP”

Read the story of Bojan Arsenijević’s (NGO Re Generation, Serbia) influencing experience about taking PEP, or post-exposure prophylaxis, which represents a combination of antiretroviral drugs that minimises the possibility of infection after accidental exposure to a potentially infectious material. Another 1st of December went by, one of just a few days during the year when you can read or hear a story about HIV in Serbia. Every year on this day, data from the Institute of Public Health is released, with this year’s reporting 105 new cases, with a total of 3585 patients that have been affected since the onset of the epidemic in 1985, of which 1884 have AIDS. I am finally using this opportunity to write the article that has been on my mind for more than a year. Ever since the onset of the HIV epidemic in the early 1980s, people living with HIV have faced various stigmas, including problems, accusations, and rejections, even by professionals from different institutions and NG

A Year Long Battle for Transparent Policy Making

Amendments of the Law on Psychoactive and Controlled Substances in Serbia. Read about the controversial and not-transparent process of the adoption of the amendments, and the fight of NGOs to be involved. In the process of harmonisation with EU regulations, and especially in order to organise services more efficiently in the Republic of Serbia, amendments to the Law on Psychoactive and Controlled Substances aim to address the introduction of new organisational units whose role is to provide conditions for implementing effective mitigation measures for harmful consequences of “drug abuse“ as stated by the Ministry of Health. Amendments to the Law on Psychoactive and Controlled Substances foresee the establishment of a Drug Monitoring Centre, tasked with collecting statistical data related to drug use in the general population, needs for treatment, infectious diseases and mortality associated with drug use, data in drug-related links to crimes, drug seizures, and the drug mar