Alarm bells are ringing over the latest figures that show the number of female addicts in Kabul city has doubled in the last two years. Simultaneously poppy cultivation has increased to 61 percent in 2011, a jump of 7 percent from the previous year.
Alarm bells are ringing over the latest figures that show the number of female addicts in Kabul city has doubled in the last two years. Simultaneously poppy cultivation has increased to 61 percent in 2011, a jump of 7 percent from the previous year.Deputy Finance and Planning in the Ministry of Counter Narcotics engineer Ibrahim Azhar said according to calculations made by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and his ministry, there are one million addicts in the country. However, the capacity for providing treatment in comparison to the number of addicts was a mere 1 percent.
“There are 1,160 beds for addicts of which 365 are in Kabul city. Eight hundred and fifty for males, 120 are for female, 90 for children and the rest for teenagers which include girls as well,” he said.
Engineer Azhar said the US embassy has responded to their requests to the international community to increase de-addiction capacity, and promised to “increase the beds for the addicted from 365 to 800 in Kabul.”
Meanwhile, the ministry has unveiled its own plans to build seven 200-bed hospitals with the help of international donors where addicts will also be taught vocational skills. “Women addicts are not allowed by the family to visit hospitals for treatment except in provinces where drug addiction is rampant like Badakhshan, Herat, Ghazni, Farah and Takhar provinces. Here women stay in hospital untill they become well.
Child addicts
Spokesman of the Ministry of Public Health Dr. Ghulam Sakhi Kargar said the number of addicts was highest in the north where most families work in the carpet industry, particularly the women. Mothers not only take opium in order to keep working, but they feed their children to keep them quiet. As a result the children are turned into addicts in their infancy.
According to Kargar, it was not enough to just provide access to treatment as a strategy to counter addiction. What the authorities need to do was stop the flow of narcotics to people, he recommends. “Experience shows that most addicts are able to give up using drugs but when they have access they start using it again.” Apart from opium the commonly available intoxicants include kerosene, toothpaste, perfume, soporific medicines and so-called chocolates made from the sap of hashish.
There are 67 health centres for drug abusers in the country. Fifty have hospitalisation facilities, while the remaining are clinics. Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s opium – 5,800 tonnes in 2011 – the main ingredient of heroin.
Nejat Centre in Kabul’s Ashoqan and Arifan area has been treating drug addicts – children, women and men – for 20 years. Director Amanullah Rauofi said female addicts have increased. Nejat staff visit the women I their homes mostly.
Common story
A young woman who works at the Centre’s advocacy department, to raise awareness (she did not want to be identified), says she was under treatment here for years. She told Killid how she became an addict, a common enough story in Afghanistan. “My husband was jobless during the Taleban regime. He was always smoking and over time I became an addict. We started to take heroin. Soon our children became addicts as well.” She has six children.
She says she stopped drugs and took treatment because of her eldest daughter who is now in class nine. Her daughter would come home from school crying because her classmates were mercilessly teasing her. “My daughter was always crying, pleading with me to stop this habit,” she recalls. “I am very happy I did,” says the addict-turned-advocate.
Under the National Skills Development Programme addicted women are treated and trained in vocational skills like embroidery, machine-based sewing. The programme is supported by the Ministry of Labour, Social affairs, Martyr and Disabled (MoLSAMD). Spokesman of the ministry Ali Eftekhari says there are vocational centres in all 32 provinces. But there is a shortage of teachers and also problems of security in some provinces. Efetkhari said the ministry has plans to build training centres for teachers in six zones to develop vocational studies. There are ambitious plans in the pipeline but the situation on the ground needs urgent action.
Balkh province has 110,000 addicts, 17 percent of them women and children, and three drug treatment hospitals, according to Dr Marina Sinayee in Mazar. There are a total of only 26 beds for females in the province.
Director of Counter Narcotics in Balkh Ahmad Farid Ajiz said 665 persons were treated in 2011 – 235 were female and 137 children. Authorities concede the number of female addicts has been growing.
Marghalara Khara, head of Health Department in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, said counter narcotics was not just a regional but international problem. She appealed for financial assistance from the international community. “Ministry of Women’s Affairs was getting funds from Ministry of Counter Narcotics to run awareness raising narcotics campaigns. But due to budget constraints this year the money has not been given to us, and the programme has come to a halt,” Khara said.
