 We are at the entrance of the 2nd European Harm Reduction Conference. It's Maria Fielen, who is the coordinator of the European Harm Reduction Network. What are the key messages so far at the conference? I think the key messages so far are really around hepatitis C and a really growing need to really start looking at how we can prevent hepatitis C and treat hepatitis C amongst people who inject drugs. We've also been talking a lot about new drugs and new psychoactive substances and also party drugs in different harm reduction interventions such as pill testing, funding for harm reduction has been a key issue for us. There's 16 million people estimated, 16 million who inject drugs worldwide, estimated 3 million of those who inject drugs are living with HIV. The Global Fund has invested about 600 million in harm reduction programming which makes it the largest harm reduction donor in the world. Of the 58 countries that have received Global Fund funding for harm reduction, 14 of those are now ineligible for Global Fund funding at all and 10 of those will receive no new money for harm reduction and increasingly the challenge for all of us who want to expand harm reduction services to people who inject drugs particularly in poor countries will be the effort that's required now to convince national governments that it's their responsibility to invest their money in harm reduction. We are living in complicated times in Europe, in various countries, harm reduction is under pressure because of finances, because of changing politics. We are a bit under fire now because we have a right when conservative mayor who started the war on drugs again, we're going to see all the same problems throughout Europe with this new populist wave. We need furthermore to address repressive drug policy and the legal environment that they create which systemically drives human rights abuses, most notably the denial of the right to the highest attainable standard of health. All the harm reduction measures that we have, they are too narrow because the prohibition ideology prevents them to develop. We've got a lot of repression against drug users and we are trying to develop a consumption room, we are trying to make a lobby with the government to implement this consumption room, but it's very difficult. Harm is here now and has many faces, homelessness, no acceptance of drug users or HIV positive people in hostels and shelters, no OST hepatitis C or proper HIV treatment in prisons, inadequate syringe needle exchange and distribution, no drug consumption rooms, no drug users access to naloxone, strict prison sentences for drug users even for micro quantities. We are now worried that the outbreaks that have been happening of HIV in Greece and in Romania since 2011, we are very concerned that the positive trend in Europe of HIV infections among injecting drug users is returning. If you want to see what difference harm reduction can make, it's good for example to compare Ukraine and Russia. In Russia, OST open substitution programs are illegal, the government does not support harm reduction programs at all and now it is one of the few countries where there is still rapidly growing HIV epidemic among injecting drug users. While in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government made significant efforts to scale up harm reduction programs and now actually there were reductions in the rate of HIV and non-guided use. Now these developments I think are now under a threat because of politics. A good example is what's happening now in Crimea where after the Russian occupation, the Russian government's first decision was to ban opiate substitution programs. What are the key problems and challenges for harm reduction in Kosovo? Well, first of all, the needle in exchange syringe program is not covering all the countries so they are only operating into three cities and the other issues are that people from rural area cannot come and be provided with syringes and clean needles. We have a problem with hepatitis C where almost 90% of the users in Copenhagen have the hepatitis C virus. The key message is to prevent the HCVR to have low threshold testing. I think it's very important that drug users have the possibility to test in their areas where they live, where they use, where they go to every day. I've become a strong advocate for e-cigarettes and alternative nicotine products and I think this is the next big harm reduction area. Much of tobacco control, rather like drug control, has been zero tolerance ban all smoking, dislike of smokers and a deliberate stigmatization of smokers and what public health people need to do is they need to switch around and see that there is something now that might be a very positive harm reduction tool. We came out here specifically to see what Europe has done to harm reduction because there's so much farther ahead than the United States is in that area and one of the greatest things that we've really gotten from this conference is how to start these things up and the conversations and how to get the people involved. Switzerland has an experience in harm reduction now over 20 years. It is absolutely evident and scientifically proved that this was a very positive step. If I take just the fight against AIDS and hepatitis C, it was successful to reduce the contamination and the treatment with prescription of heroin really allowed the people who were not able to comply other treatments to reintegrate the society with a dramatic, dramatic result, positive result. We come here and then it's a whole other level of people working together and cooperating. I've never been in these countries before but it's empowering.