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.