On 20 May, during the 79th World Health Assembly (WHA), the Global Commission on Drug Policy hosted the fourth edition of its Interministerial Dialogue series. This year’s Dialogue, entitled “Accelerating Access to Opioid Agonist Maintenance Therapy (OAMT): An Essential Public Health Intervention”, built on previous editions focused on access to controlled medicines, harm reduction, and the UN System Common Position on Drugs.

The event took place against the backdrop of growing normative support for OAMT, which nevertheless remains inaccessible to many of those who would benefit most from it. As both an essential harm reduction intervention and the gold standard for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD), OAMT reaches fewer than 17% of people estimated to be living with OUD globally. Recent cuts to global health funding and development assistance have further jeopardized OAMT provision, as well as community- and peer-led services in low- and middle-income countries.

Moderated by Commissioner Michel Kazatchkine, the Dialogue brought together speakers from the governments of Ukraine (Oleksandr Kapustin), Malaysia (Nik Khairol Reza bin Md Yazin), and Kenya (Andrew Mulwa), as well as representatives from international organizations and civil society, including the Skoun Lebanese Addictions Center (Tatyana Sleiman), the  World Health Organization (Anja Busse), UNAIDS (Mahesh Mahalingam), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Marijke Wijnroks), and the IInternational Network of People Who Use Drugs- INPUD (Anton Basenko).

Speakers highlighted country-level successes in adopting and scaling up OAMT, and the resulting benefits for HIV and overdose prevention, treatment adherence, and overall health and wellbeing. They also examined the challenges posed by war, conflict, humanitarian crises, funding shortfalls, and persistent stigma and discrimination. Looking ahead, participants pointed to innovations such as long-acting depot buprenorphine (LADB) as promising tools to expand the reach and impact of OAMT programmes.

A full event report will be made available on the GCDP website in the coming months.