KENYA: AIDS Prevention Amongst Drug Users a Challenge
Susan Anyangu
MOMBASA, Oct 21 2009 (IPS) – The United Nation Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) claims that Kenya has more drug users than any other East African country. UNODC estimates there are 100,000 cocaine users, 200,000 using opiates like heroin and four million who smoke cannabis.
In the coastal city of Mombasa, Kenya s main port, which has the country s highest concentration of substance abusers, Masudi Omar of Reachout Centre Trust, a drug addiction treatment centre, says it s vital that AIDS prevention programmes reach this demographic.
A research done by our partners USAID in 2005 revealed that 50 percent of injecting drug users who were tested for HIV were found to be positive. The challenge here is passing HIV risk reduction messages to drug and alcohol …
CAMBODIA: ‘Abuse Rampant in Drug Detention Centres’ – Human Rights Watch
Joel Chong
BANGKOK, Jan 25 2010 (IPS) – A staff member would use the cable to beat people. On each whip, the person s skin would come off and stick on the cable, said M noh*, 16, of his detention in Choam Chao Youth Rehabilitation Centre, a government-run facility for drug dependents in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
If anyone tried to escape, he would be punished some people managed to escape, some didn t. Most who were punished for escaping would be beaten unconscious. Beatings like this happened everyday, he added.
M noh is just one of the 53 Cambodians interviewed by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) for its 93-page report Skin on the Cable , launched Monday in this Thai capital.
Between February and July 2009, the HRW documented extensive p…