Murtaza Majeed is currently International Coordinator for Youth RISE, and has been working on drug treatment, policy making, advocacy on drug policy, and harm reduction services and youth in Afghanistan. Majeed has worked with Medicines du Monde and the National AIDS Control Program in Afghanistan and he was a national training and resource center coordinator for the Afghanistan National AIDS Control Program. The first NSP and methadone clinic funded by the Global Fund and Afghanistan government was one of his achievements. Training and development of methadone treatment to other health staffs in Afghanistan was part of his responsibilities through the National Training and Resource Centre. In 2010 he started to advocate for alternative and evidence informed harm reduction in globally and more specific in Nepal and Afghanistan and established a center for harm reduction and drug dependency which include Ibogaine in order to have a licensed and prescribed Ibogaine and to open clinics for substance use disorders.
Murtaza will introduce the Nepal Ibogaine Treatment Project which will provide Nepali opiate users will the resources and support necessary to achieve and maintain sobriety. Using a biopsychosocial approach to the treatment and care of participants, project services will include pre treatment evaluation and readiness, medical screening and monitoring, and inpatient care, aftercare and life skills.
The Nepal Ibogaine Treatment Project is designed: ((i) with the implications of scaling up in mind; (ii) to be low threshold (i.e., easy to learn, non-intimidating, low in cost to implement, and not requiring a lot of additional work or new thinking); (iii) with the implications of diversification in mind; (iv) to provides new services to underserved populations (e.g. youth, women, sex workers, MSM, PWAs, Non-IDUs); (v) to be congruent with local socio-cultural patterns; and (vi), as compatible with the WHOs and its partners established values, norms and facilities. The intervention’s components are rooted in the overall philosophy of harm reduction and the theoretical models that support individual and community/group behavior changes.
The overall goal of this project is to make the treatment available to the countries with emerging substance use disorders (SUD) and to promote the treatment as one of the options for treatment of drug addiction. The model for treatment will be adapted based on each countries socio-economical and drug use behaviors in collaboration with local partners.