AFGHANISTAN: Demand for narcotics outstrips available treatment for drug addicts
KABUL, 26 June (IRIN): For Hedayatullha, 35, Kabul is the only place to treat his heroin addiction (misbrug). A fellow addict who underwent treatment at Kabuls Nejat Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) told him that it was one of the very few places able to help him.
– He (the treated addict) encouraged me to come here to Kabul to get rid of my addiction, Hedayatullha told IRIN.
Leaving his wife and five children behind in Urozgan Province, he headed north to Kabul. It took him four days to reach his destination.
He said he had been taking heroin and hashish for over 13 years and begged the hospital to treat him. However, the NRC said it had no beds available.
– We have only 10 beds, but the number of addicts who should be hospitalised is very, very high, said Tariq Suliman, the NRC director.
About two dozen drug addicts visit this small rehabilitation centre each day to get free treatment and help.
Afghanistan produces about 92 percent of the heroin consumed in the world, UNODC said. – Opium production in Afghanistan remains a major problem, said the executive director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa Tuesday.
About one million people – or 3,7 percent of Afghanistans estimated 27 million population – are considered to be addicted to different kinds of narcotics, including heroin, opium and hashish, according to UNODC.
Lack of treatment centres
According to Afghanistans Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN), there are 36 treatment and rehabilitation facilities for drug addicts in 22 of the countrys 34 provinces.
– Eighty percent of drug addicts live in rural areas where there is a huge scarcity of drug addiction treatment facilities, Christina Gynna Oguz, UNODC representative for Afghanistan, said Monday.
Afghanistans Ministry of Public Health and the UN have now turned to donors to fund a pioneering project – the treatment of drug addicts within the poor mountanious countrys primary healthcare system, thus enabling drug users to access rehabilitation services at provincial hospitals.
Addicted women, children
The UNODC report found that women made up 2,1 percent of all drug addicts in Afghanistan.
In some rural parts of the country, where access to basic health services is limited, women use locally produced opium as a painkiller, to ease insomnia (søvnløshed), or to make their children sleep.
Most of the drug users in Afghanistan are isolated individuals who satisfy their addiction at filthy and dilapidated place.
– Women who weave carpets or do other jobs at home tend to give opium to their children to make them sleep, thereby enabling themselves to work undisturbed, Lotfullah Lotfi, a counter-narcotics official in the northern Balkh Province, told IRIN.
At least 60.000 children are addicted to narcotics in Afghanistan, the World Drug Report said.
Kilde: FN-bureauet IRINnews
