HIV/NARCOTICS: MOVE TO HELP IV DRUG ABUSERS

Govt Puts On More Caring Face As Aids Conference Nears

To counter the high HIV infection rate among intravenous drug users - as well as foreign accusations of human-rights violations during the country's war on drugs - the government will step up its harm-reduction programme to help this group of people overcome problems related to substance abuse as well as HIV.

The search for injecting drug users would be intensified at the highest level, while the methadone maintenance programme and treatments for HIV, including the application of anti-retroviral drugs, will be fully provided for intravenous drug addicts, Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said yesterday.

Sudarat said some websites of overseas non-governmental organisations had criticised the country's campaign to eradicate illicit drugs, and the government feared they would revive the issue to discredit the country during the international Aids conference.

The accusations of human-rights violations are "total nonsense and malicious", she said, adding that the government's official explanations from time to time in response to those "groundless" accusations had been completely ignored.

The state's war on drugs is totally free of discrimination and does not violate the human rights of drug users, Sudarat said.  The country has even had in place since last year a law categorising drug users as patients needing proper rehabilitation.

"We have never ever treated drug abuse as a kind of crime as is endlessly insinuated, but as an illness," she said.

As part of the harm-reduction scheme some 10,000 intravenous drug takers have been brought into the methadone maintenance programme under the new law, she said.

The harm-reduction programme is a collaboration of the Public Health Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Narcotics Control Board, the United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids and local Aids NGOs.  The government would use the opportunity presented by hosting the Aids conference to reiterate its stance and clarify the ways that people injecting drugs are actually being treated in this country, Sudarat said.

The harm-reduction programme was recently extended to drug users in prisons and juvenile detention centres, said Sompong Chareonsuk, UNAids' country programme adviser.

The number of intravenous drug users has slightly increased as an adverse effect of the war on drugs, conceded Chitra Lubpairee, deputy secretary-general of the Narcotics Control Board.