Dr Alex Wodak

Dr Alex Wodak is a physician and has been Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service, St Vincent’s Hospital since 1982. Major interests include:

* prevention of HIV among injecting drug users,
* brief interventions for problem drinkers,
* prevention of alcohol problems,
* treatment of drug users
* drug policy reform.

Dr Wodak is President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and was President of the International Harm Reduction Association (1996-2004). He helped establish the first needle syringe programme (1986) and the first medically supervised injecting centre (1999) in Australia when both were pre-legal.

Dr Wodak often works in developing countries on HIV control among injecting drug users. He has published over 200 scientific papers.

Dr Wodak helped establish the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (1987), the NSW Users AIDS Association (1989), the Australasian Society of HIV Medicine (1990) and the Australian needle syringe programme annual survey (1995).