MELAKA: Little is known about a man in Melaka who has equipped thousands of drug abusers from all over the globe with tertiary education.
Director of Emeritus Addiction Studies, Tay Bian How (pic), only received the local media spotlight when an announcement was made about Melaka hosting the International Recovery Summit (IRS) 2023 from today to Thursday (May 11) at a leading hotel here.
Tay, who hails from Bandar Hilir here, was seconded by the Malaysian government in 2000 to serve as the Director of the Colombo Plan Drug Advisory Programme and worked in Sri Lanka for many years.
He later assumed the post of Director of the International Centre for Credentialing and Education of Addiction Professionals (ICCE).
Tay, 69, led and coordinated the development of training initiatives aimed at professionalising the drug demand reduction workforce in 60 countries across the globe and was seen as the primary force behind several milestone initiatives to reduce drug demand in the Asia-Pacific region.
In an interview yesterday, Tay said he had completed drug prevention and treatment studies at Johns Hopkins University in the US as a Fulbright scholar and also held the post of Acting Secretary General of the Colombo Plan for six months in 2014.
“When I first joined the Colombo Plan, I had the opportunity to grasp the drug addiction issues facing Asian nations, which helped me outline innovative ideas on how to tackle it,” he said.
Tay promptly ramped up the Colombo Plan’s drug demand reduction strategies and was the brainchild of a course to herald a new future for people with substance use disorder (SUD).
“My main goal is to empower addiction practitioners, including SUD individuals with a professional university certification, to be addiction professionals. This is in tandem with my tagline: education transforms lives,” he added.
IRS is an event to celebrate and laud the efforts of addiction professionals in assisting SUD individuals in their recovery from substance abuse.
