Few Treatment Options for Afghans as Drug Use Rises
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
NYT
KABUL, Afghanistan — Once a river flowed under the low Pul-i-Sokhta bridge here, but now the thin stream is clotted with garbage, the banks are piled with refuse and crowds of heroin and opium addicts huddle in the shadows, some hanging like moths near the bridge’s supports, then slumping in the haze of narcotic smoke.
When outsiders venture in, dozens of the addicts — there are 200 or 300 here on any given day — drift over to see the newcomers. Most of the visitors are health care workers trying to persuade the addicts to visit their clinic for a shower and a medical screening.
“Are you taking names for treatment?” one man asks, his soiled salwar kameez hanging loosely around his thin body. “Put me down, my name is Zainullah.”
This is another of Afghanistan’s afflictions: a growing drug addiction problem and all the ills that come with that, not least H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, which can be transmitted when addicts share needles. There were about 900,000 drug users in Afghanistan in 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, a marked increase from previous years. That means about 7 percent of the adult population of 14 million is using narcotics.
(More here.)
NYT
KABUL, Afghanistan — Once a river flowed under the low Pul-i-Sokhta bridge here, but now the thin stream is clotted with garbage, the banks are piled with refuse and crowds of heroin and opium addicts huddle in the shadows, some hanging like moths near the bridge’s supports, then slumping in the haze of narcotic smoke.
When outsiders venture in, dozens of the addicts — there are 200 or 300 here on any given day — drift over to see the newcomers. Most of the visitors are health care workers trying to persuade the addicts to visit their clinic for a shower and a medical screening.
“Are you taking names for treatment?” one man asks, his soiled salwar kameez hanging loosely around his thin body. “Put me down, my name is Zainullah.”
This is another of Afghanistan’s afflictions: a growing drug addiction problem and all the ills that come with that, not least H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, which can be transmitted when addicts share needles. There were about 900,000 drug users in Afghanistan in 2010, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, a marked increase from previous years. That means about 7 percent of the adult population of 14 million is using narcotics.
(More here.)
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