Preparing to inject India
The Burnet Institute's Centre for International Health has been involved in advocacy, training and technical support to harm reduction in India since 1995. In the late 1990’s, Burnet Institute initiated the Australia-India HIV Prevention Partnership to strengthen national capacity for HIV prevention in India and the India Australia Training Capacity Building Project (IATCBP): SP13-5 Training in HIV/AIDS for State AIDS Control Societies.
Between 2002-04, with funding from Family Health International India, CIH conducted a series of training and capacity building workshops in harm reduction among NGOs and Government Organizations resulting in the development of a training manual titled 'Resource Module for Trainers in India: Drug use Related Health Promotion and Care'.
The Centre’s strong association with Indian NGOs working in the drug treatment and HIV prevention field continues, with more recent work in partnership with SHARAN, New Delhi on Project Network-Challenge Fund focussing on introducing and strengthening harm reduction interventions for IDUs in nine Indian States.
In 2007, CIH was involved in the evaluation of harm reduction activities funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) Challenge Fund.