Imphal, May 20 : Opium is available in plenty at Japhou bazar of Chandel district and women are being hired by the traffickers to smuggle the drug, according to Molenson, project coordinator, SASO in an interaction with the media at Japhou bazar in Chandel.
Traffickers supply drugs to these women as their wage and also utilise them in trafficking the opium, he alleged while stating that these women were poor and had financial problems.
From Japhou bazar, 60 km from Imphal, it takes two days on foot to reach the Myanmar border through forests.
On these routes, many runners are trafficking drugs including opium, the SASO coordinator said.
Such illegal business are being done by men but they engage women for transporting the drugs, he observed.
Molenson said other reasons for women taking up such jobs was family condition, as most of them are impoverished backgrouns with no livelihood source.
Apart from drug abuse problem, the state government also has been neglecting health care in Chandel district which added to the woes of the people he said.
The condition of the government hospital here is dismal and there are no private clinics in the district where people can avail paid health facilities.
There is no facility for CD4 count, Molenson said adding that people in the interior areas of the district face utmost difficulty in availing CD4 count.
Talking of the difficulties faced by the people while availing CD4, he said people from interior villages often halt overnight at the SASO office and then proceed to Imphal the next day.
In Imphal also they had to stay for two days as after booking for CD4 centre at Imphal, they have to wait for the result. On the fourth day they have to return home.
In the entire four days a person had to spend at least Rs. 200 per day.
Even though officials of the SASO collected the sample for CD4 count for onward test at Imphal, they could not get the accurate result, he went on to say.
SASO and CNP+ have altogether 300 clients in the district. SASO has 40 women clients while CNP+ has 180.
A total of 20 clients of SASO are availing ART, Molenson informed adding that during a survey conducted by SASO, around 50 children were found infected by HIV/AIDS and most of the children were Injecting Drug Users, IDU.
But only one child is taking ART, he added.
So far, 340 IDUs have been registered with the organisation and most of them were users of cocktail, he observed.
SASO reached the district as early as 1999, but the drug problem is still increasing in Chandel district.
The two NGOs, SASO and CNP+, are doing their work on parent to child transmission, PTCT. There is no facility for surgery in the hospital in Chandel, he pointed out stating that when the need arises, they have to go to Imphal or nearby hospitals for the same.
The district AIDS Control Committee, CACC has seven board members but none of them are residents of Chandel district.
The coordinator said Buprenorphine was also not available in the district and as a result 26 IDUs from the district are currently getting buprenorphine at Imphal.
If the medicine be made available in the district, it will benefit the infected people, he said.
The NGO also identified 196 commercial sex workers. But only few are residents of Chandel district while most of them are coming from other parts of the district.
These commercial workers are home based and some are detected engaging in work at nearby security posts, he observed.
Johnson, an IDU who has been using drugs for the last six years, said he was using cocktail and others according to availability.
But sometime ago, when he went to a de-addiction centre at Chandel as he do not want to use drugs any more, only the signboard was found displayed with no work being taken up at the de-addiction centre. It also had no staff, he said.
Later, he went to the Thoubal district de-addiction centre for treatment. “But unfortunately I can`t leave drugs as there is frustration and stress,” he said.
He also observed that if there are facilities for availing buprenorphine in the district headquarters, the number of IDUs may reduce sharply.
IFP
0 comments:
Post a Comment