ID: 1269
Type of submission: Oral
Conference track: Practice
Topics: Harm Reduction Services and Service Provision; Innovative Harm Reduction Programmes
Presenting author: Tao Cai
Shaohua Yang, YI MA, Tao Cai
Methadone services has been operation in China for more than 12 years,as an important platform in the harm reduction national strategy government has invest a lot of resources. How ever the coverage of MMT still limited in less than 10% of the heroin users. One of the reason is access barrier. People have to travel to the clinic on daily bases during business hours, this has become challenges for their employment,family relation also time and financial burden. On the other side according to the government methadone clinic management guideline emphasis that methadone should be taken in the clinic only.
In 2013 a discussion was held in Hong Ta District Yuxi city with participation of police,MMT clinic,community, HR professionals aiming to develop the 1st methadone take home dose pilot. 8th Dec 2013 the 1st take home services started in Hong Ta MMT clinic, base on the management/operational guideline and regular community consultation, the model has been modified base on the demand. All the data indicated that the take home dose services has improve the adherence of client, reducing lost to follow up, improving the recruitment of new client. The law enforcement team also convinced by the data which shows significant drop of urine test positive and increasing number of people enrolled to the MMT clinic with good adherence.
In 2016 6 cities in China has replicated the model and all have produced convincing data to support the strategy. Now government has adopt the model, we could see this would support the MMT services in countries with similar context like China.