Winning war against drugs crucial to fight epidemic
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-10-27 06:03

In the eyes of Wu Youcang, vice-director of the HIV/AIDS Control and Prevention Centre of Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province, prevention is a much more important and difficult task than the treatment on patients and social welfare for orphans.

Prevention measures against HIV/AIDS mainly include public education, HIV testing among the general public and various intervention activities among high-risk groups.

All these intervention actions now have been carried out or piloted in Dehong and Yingjiang.

However, the way ahead is still very long.

First, Dehong, as well as the whole Yunnan Province, is near the Golden Triangle, an area between Myanmar, Thailand and Laos notorious for its drug production and trafficking.

A lot of drugs pass through these regions, which leaves thousands of people vulnerable to taking drugs and to being infected with HIV.

Local residents, the majority of whom are rural ones, just take the drug in the farmland, among the plants and woods, and even in the mountains, Wu noted.

Because drugs that can be injected through syringes are much cheaper than the heroin which is snorted through the nose, people usually take heroin at the very beginning when they have enough money and then begin to use the syringe later, Wu said.

"People here have a long history of taking drugs and there are countless people taking drugs," Wu said.

As a result, the war against HIV/AIDS can't be won as long as the drug disaster exists, Wu noted.

At least 75 per cent of the HIV carriers in Dehong are infected by the virus through sharing the same syringe.

And about 80 per cent of them are living in rural areas and even more remote mountainous regions, making the intervention efforts more difficult.

Meanwhile, the poor awareness about drug and disease and low educational backgrounds among people also bring about serious obstacles for prevention work, Wu added.

The drug abuse also causes the HIV-infection of a lot of women, men and children through unsafe sexual contact and mother-to-infant transmission during pregnancy.

In Dehong, the official report shows that there are more than 2,000 prostitutes and at least 25,000 drug users in 2004. But experts estimate that the real number is much bigger.

"Although condoms have been placed in all the hotels and entertainment places for free, the rate of condom use is still not very high," said Teng Yun, director of the HIV/AIDS Control Centre of Dehong.

Meanwhile, other intervention measures, such as the methadone replacement treatment and exchange of clean syringes, also have their own headaches, Teng said.

As a State-level pilot project, Dehong has tried its best to give out clean syringes in communities.

However, the result is dismal. Many people dare not take the syringe because they are afraid of being caught by police, Teng said.

The situation of methadone replacement treatment is better. In Ruili County, the only methadone treatment clinic in Yunnan Province has been set up in June 2005.

Up to now, a total of 110 drug addicts have been approved by the clinic to use the methadone every day.

"I feel much better after I took the methadone, restoring more strength and being able to work now," said A Liang, an assumed name for a drug user, at the clinic.

Facing the large number of drug users of Dehong and Yunnan, the methadone treatment still has a long way to go.

(China Daily 10/27/2005 page12)