On 20 and 21 September 2011 in Lisbon, Portugal, An Annual Expert Meeting on Treatment Demand Indicator was held. Momtchil Vassilev (Director of the NFP) and Alexandar Panayotov (an expert at the NFP) took part in it, as well as representatives of 29 other European countries which are a part of the European Information Network on Drugs and Drug Addictions (REITOX).
At the first session of the meeting an overview was given on the development of the Treatment Demand Indicator in the last year. At the second session two topics were presented: “Recent trends on heroin in Europe – using Treatment demand data” and “A long term perspective: 25 years of data collection on drug treatment demand in the Netherlands”.
The third session was oriented to the new version of the Indicator Protocol (TDI Protocol ver.3.0). This was also the main topic of the Annual Expert Meeting where issues of the different sectors of the TDI Protocol ver.3.0 were discussed: introduction, main guidelines (definitions and a list of topics needing information), methodological rules and ethical principles, additional Module on Treatment Prevalence and the contents of the template of FONTE – Data reporting form.
The creating of a new version of the TDI Protocol has been necessitated as a result of the changes that have occurred with the problem of drug use over the last 10-15 years, in the drug treatment systems as well as with the data reported by the member countries of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addictions (EMCDDA). The basic purposes of the protocol revision are oriented at maintaining the main tasks of the indicator and the data collation over time; improving the clarity of the definitions, terminology and methodology; taking in consideration some important changes in the drug use problems and the treatment systems; improving the collecting, reporting and managing of data; flexibility of the monitoring systems and more analytical capacity.
It is planned for the new protocol to be adopted by the end of the year. If this be so, it is planned the preliminary work for adapting the protocol to the national monitoring systems for treatment demand to be done in 2012, its very introduction to be carried out at national level in 2013, and in 2014 the first data (referring to 2013) based on TDI Protocol ver.3.0 to be sent to EMCDDA.