|
Afghanistan
Bombing Could
Cause AIDS Explosion
Excerpt
By Wendy Pugh, Reuters Health
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The
US-led attacks on Afghanistan will eventually disrupt the flow
of opium from one of the world's top suppliers and could cause
heroin-injecting to surge in neighboring Pakistan, leading to
a potential AIDS catastrophe, researchers said on Friday.
Heroin prices on the Pakistan-Afghan border plunged after the
September 11 attacks on New York and Washington as Afghanistan's
opium stocks were unloaded.
But the flood of heroin has slowed since US and British warplanes
began retaliatory air strikes on Sunday.
Researchers attending an international conference in Melbourne,
Australia, said climbing heroin prices could force Pakistani addicts
who used to sniff the drug when it was cheap and plentiful to
turn to intravenous drug use.
``This could be a public health crisis of unimaginable proportions.
It is not speculation without foundation,'' said Alex Wodak of
Sydney's St. Vincent's Hospital.
Intravenous drug use is one of the major causes of the spread
of HIV/AIDS.
Nadeem-ur-Rehman, an HIV/AIDS worker and researcher in Pakistan
with non-government organization Nai Zindagi (New Life), said
there were already signs of a shift to intravenous injecting in
the border city of Quetta.
Rehman said the prevalence of AIDS in Pakistan was low, at less
than 1% of the population. But needle-sharing, the sale of blood
to health services, prostitution and unprotected sex left the
country vulnerable.
``Everything is there. You can't say we are immune because we
are a Muslim country,'' he said.
Over 95% of the heroin on the streets of Europe originates in
the Golden Crescent, the poppy fields on the rugged borderlands
of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. US officials say Afghanistan
in particular has emerged as a major supplier.
Rehman said Pakistan was estimated to have 500,000 chronic heroin
abusers, about 440,000 of whom inhale the drug in a practice called
``Chasing the Dragon.''
An earlier study in 1993, which he said had probably overstated
the numbers, estimated there were 3 million heroin users in Pakistan.
Wodak said an explosion in AIDS in Pakistan would have implications
for the whole of Asia.
``We have learned that HIV does not follow national boundaries.
It is likely if there is a large pool of people who are HIV positive
in Pakistan, you can be sure it will flow into neighboring countries,''
Wodak said.
The two experts were among 70 researchers in Melbourne on Thursday
and Friday for the fourth meeting of the Global Research Network
on HIV Prevention in Drug Using Populations.
Seven million people in the Asia-Pacific region are living with
AIDS, or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it,
representing about 20% of the worldwide total, according to UN
figures.
Reference
Source 89
For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick
Prevention Resources".
|
