Advocating for opioid substitution therapy in Central Asia: much still to be done

Opioid substitution therapy (OST) was first introduced in the formerly-Soviet Central Asian Republics as an HIV prevention intervention for people who inject drugs (PWID) in 2002. Presently, pilot programs function in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan has scaled-up from the pilot phase to the operation of over 20 OST sites nation-wide. All three countries have taken steps towards lower-threshold programs, allowing clients to enroll regardless of HIV status, and, in some cases, without documentation of failure to complete other drug treatment programs. However, OST programs remain exclusively funded by international donors, and political and societal opposition to these programs threaten their stability. In order to counter negative campaigns and political attacks on OST, organized advocacy efforts are needed. This commentary explores efforts undertaken by international donor partners supporting advocacy efforts to scale-up OST and assure a sustainable future for programming. It examines both proactive and reactive efforts, and the variety of target audiences that need to be reached to conduct effective advocacy. Ultimately we find that, while a range of tools are available for OST advocacy in the hostile environments of the former Soviet Union, the strengthening of advocacy groups is needed to assure an optimized platform exists for using the evidence and developing relevant materials in the appropriate languages (including, but not limited to, Russian) for both proactive and reactive efforts; and that more robust monitoring is desirable to bring sharper focus to replicable methods.