EGYPT: Needle sharing rife among drug users

Photo: IRIN

HIV prevalence among IDUs in Egypt is relatively low, but needle sharing is rife among the group, experts say (file photo)

DUBAI, 21 June 2009 (IRIN) - The prevalence of HIV among intravenous drug users (IDUs) in Egypt is relatively low, but needle sharing is rife among this group, putting them at risk of contracting the virus, experts say.

“Sharing needles and syringes is very high in Egypt. This is very alarming because although only 1 percent of IDUs are HIV-positive, the high percentage of needle sharing may mean that we are sitting on a ticking bomb,” Ehab Kharrat, a senior programme adviser for the UNDP HIV/AIDS Regional Programme in the Arab States (HARPAS), told IRIN.

Different studies of sample groups show that 45-50 percent of drug users in Egypt share needles, he said.

“When the IDUs get the drugs, many of them do not wait to get a clean needle or syringe, so they grab the next available one they find,” Midhat Al-Arabi, head of a programme dealing with drug users at the Freedom Drug Rehabilitation Centre, a local NGO, told IRIN.

“They [addicts] believe that securing the tool [the syringe] first is a bad omen,” said 29-year-old Mohammed (he preferred to give his first name only), who stopped injecting himself eight months ago, told IRIN by phone from Cairo. “I used to buy the narcotic first then inject myself with the first syringe I found.”

“This belief increases the risk of needle sharing and hence the transmission of HIV and other [blood transmittable] diseases,” Midhat Al-Arabi told IRIN.

Mohammed said he knew he contracted HIV five months ago, a few months after he gave up drugs. “I am quite sure I got it from needle sharing. I did not engage in any sexual relationship or undergo a blood transfusion”.

Study

A 2007 study on drug addiction in Egypt by the National Centre for Social and Criminal Research showed that 600,000-800,000 people suffer from “substance dependency disorder” - about 0.8 percent of the country’s 76 million population, Kharrat, said.

“But the promising thing is that right now we have four or five outreach projects for IDUs in Egypt and these projects are effective. There are also drug rehabilitation centres which have started to have an impact and hopefully will prevent an HIV epidemic from spreading among IDUs,” Kharrat said, adding that their success rate in getting people off drugs was 40-60 percent.

Al-Arabi from the Freedom Drug Rehabilitation Centre said that harm reduction programmes have started to become acceptable in Egypt. “We have a programme where we go to the addicts and make them aware of dangerous practices. We also provide them with clean syringes which they collect from the centre,” he said.

Photo: Ben Hubbard/IRIN

Poor addicts and those living in slums are not easily reached, Kharrat says

Prisons and slums

The main obstacle is reaching drug users in prisons and detention centres, Kharrat said. “There is evidence that syringes and drugs are being smuggled into prisons and detention centres and effective prevention programmes are not in place”.

IRIN tried to contact the prisons department in Egypt but no one was available to comment.

Poor addicts and those living in slums are not easily reached, according to Kharrat. “Outreach programmes for drug users depend heavily on peer education. Because many of the current former drug addicts come from the middle class, it is easier for them to reach people of the same class,” he said.

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