Speakers

Speakers continued

Ms Nathalie Rose
Nathalie has played an active role in the advocacy around Harm Reduction services for people who use drugs in Mauritius, and has been directly involved in the setting up and launching of community Needle and Syringe Programme service delivery. Today, Nathalie is working as Advocacy Officer at PILS, Mauritian-based NGO, and is also involved in drug policy level at national, regional and international level. She is one of the 2 African representative on the Civil Society Taskforce for the UNGASS on drugs. She has a Master’s Degree in Communication from Montpellier, France, and a Certificate in Harm Reduction from York, Canada.

Professor Jannie Hugo
Professor Jannie Hugo is the Head of Family Medicine at the University of Pretoria. As head of the department he has led his team to a number of awards, including the Higher Education and Training association of South Africa National teachers award in 2013. Professor Hugo is on the executive of the Health Professionals Council of South Africa and is a founder member of the Madibeng Centre for Research. Professor Hugo is an advocate for community-orientated primary care, which was piloted in eight municipal wards in the Tshwane district. He is widely published, and has more recently started to focus on finding solutions to address the increasing amount of Nyope (heroin and cannabis) use among indigent populations in Tshwane.

Professor Monique Marks
Professor Monique Marks heads up the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology. Monique as published widely in the areas of youth social movements, ethnographic research methods, police labour relations, police organizational change and security governance. She has also authored four books. Monique is an international recognised researcher and has worked on various community projects, most recently advocating for the rights of street-dwelling heroin users to access appropriate medical care.

Dr Andrew Scheibe
Dr Andrew Scheibe is a key populations HIV prevention specialist who has worked in the field of HIV prevention for nine years. He focuses on combination prevention interventions for key populations. Dr Scheibe is also experienced in capacity building of health workers and process consulting for HIV programmes. In 2013 he was the principal investigator for a rapid assessment of HIV among people who inject drugs in five South African cities conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Since 2014 he has been providing technical assistance to TB HIV Care Association for their HIV prevention and harm reduction services for people who use drugs in South Africa.

Scott Bernstein
Scott is a program officer for the Global Drug Policy Program at the Open Society Foundations. Scott previously worked in Vancouver initiating legal challenges around heroin-assisted treatment and challenging anti–harm reduction municipal bylaws. He also was involved in Vancouver’s Insite case—on the legality of the city’s supervised injection facility—at all levels of court.  .

Ms Jesse Laitinen
After 12 years of managing a civil society fund at the Embassy of Finland, Jesse joined Khulisa Social Solutions as Strategic Partnerships Manager in 2011. She is the founder of ‘Streetscapes’, an alternative approach to law enforcement in addressing anti-social behavior and chronic homelessness in the city of Cape Town.

Dr Simon Howell
Simon Howell is a senior researcher in the Centre of Criminology at UCT. He primarily focusses on issues relating to illegal substances and gangsterism in the Western Cape, ultimately with the intention of seeking more effective and just means by which to understand and respond to these..

Mr Jamie Bridge
Jamie Bridge is the Senior Policy and Operations Manager for the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), a global network of civil society organisations. Prior to joining IDPC, Jamie was the Technical Officer for Scientific Communications at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva, and he remains an integral member of the Fund's harm reduction working group. From 2006-2009, Jamie was the Programme and Communications Officer at Harm Reduction International (for whom he is currently a Director and Trustee), and prior to that he worked in frontline drug treatment and harm reduction services in the UK. Jamie is also the Chair of the UK’s National Needle Exchange Forum (NNEF). He has an MSc in drug policy from Imperial College, and a BSc in psychology from the University of Warwick.

Mr Shuaib Hoosain
Shuaib Hoosain has a degree in psychology and a post graduate qualification in Addictions Care, both cum laude. He is the treatment manager at the Sultan Bahu Centre, a community based out-patient program that was the first in South Africa to offer opioid substitution therapy beyond short-term detoxification.

Colonel Jaco Westraat
Colonel Westraat has a BSc in Chemistry and Biochemistry and an MSc in Biomedical Forensic Science. He has been a scientist in the South African Police Services for the last 29 years and has been the Chemistry Commander in Cape Town since 1996 and is responsible for all the drug related chemical analysis. Colonel Westraat will give delegates a unique view into the role that forensics plays in drug regulation.

Mr Shaun Shelly
Shaun is dedicated to the understanding of addiction and drug use and the development of effective public policy. He has studied addiction at the University of Stellenbosch where he graduated cum laude and is currently in the Addictions Division of the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the University of Cape Town, where he is an MPhil Candidate in Addictions Mental Health. Shaun also established South Africa's first non-abstinence focused community based program for drug users in Cape Town. Shaun is a member of the Street People's forum and is on the advisory board of the Harm reduction, Abstinence and Moderation Support network (HAMS) and Families for Sensible Drug Policy (FSDP) in the United States.

Mr Nelson Medeiros
Nelson Medeiros is the Regional Coordinator for the StepUp Project in Tshwane. He has spoken at a number of international and local conferences on the subject of harm reduction and the lived experience of drug users under prohibitionist policies.

Special Contributions

Chris Arnade

Chris Arnade has a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins, and spent 20 years working as a trader on Wall Street. In 2012 Chris walked away from banks and finance to photograph record the narratives of the people of Hunts Point in the Bronx. Chris has captured the stories of struggle, resilience and survival of street dwelling drug users, who suffer as the result of marginalisation and failed economic and drug policy. Chris writes for the Guardian and has a facebook page with over 46 000 followers.

Cannabis - The Pan African Reality

On Tuesday the 2nd of February at 18h00 there will be a special session on cannabis policy in South Africa. Andre du Plessis of the Cannabis Working Group, attorney Marius de Kock and Myrtle Clark representing Fields of Green for All will be discussing important issues around the on-going and necessary cannabis policy debate. We encourage delegates to attend this side session on a topic that is often poorly understood.