Word: drugging
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...coordinating international preparations for a possible virus outbreak that could threaten millions of lives. That job got much harder on Feb. 7, when Indonesia announced it had stopped sharing with the WHO the samples of H5N1 avian-flu virus it had isolated. Simultaneously, Jakarta announced an agreement with U.S. drug company Baxter International, which will develop a vaccine from the strains and give Indonesia technical assistance in manufacturing it. For 50 years, the WHO has received free influenza-virus samples from around the world, which it makes available to pharmaceutical firms in order to ensure the production of the best...
...highest in the world, saw addiction rates skyrocket in the first few years after the fall of the Taliban. But even as the number of returnees dwindles, addiction rates continue to rise. The UNODC survey estimates that nearly 4% of Afghan adults use some kind of drug. "This goes beyond returnees," says Bayer. "The results have gone beyond expectations; no one expected use to be so high." Bayer says she has visited villages in the north of Afghanistan where the entire population is addicted to opium. Mothers in carpet weaving districts take opium to ease muscle aches earned from spending...
...growing numbers, Afghans are succumbing to the dangers of their nation's largest cash crop. "Cultivation overshadows everything here, but for Afghans, drug abuse has also become a big problem," says Elizabeth Bayer, formerly of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan...
...Over the past several years there has been a significant increase in the number of drug users throughout the country. Afghanistan's Public Health minister, Amin Fatimie, says heroin addicts in the capital city, Kabul, have doubled to 14,000 since 2003. According to the first ever nationwide survey on drug use in Afghanistan by the UNODC, there are nearly 50,000 heroin users in the country as a whole, and an additional 150,000 who use opium. "For those in the West, that may not look like a lot," says Fatimie. "But for me it's a big number...
...With a resurgent Taliban in the south, famine and widespread poverty, drug addiction may rank lowest on the long list of Afghanistan's problems. But it is accompanied by an equally disturbing increase in AIDS cases. Fatimie estimates that half of Afghanistan's 2,000 suspected and 61 confirmed cases of AIDS have been transmitted by intravenous drug use. That doesn't surprise Suliman, who says up to 10 users will share the same needle. Nejat Center and a few foreign NGOs have started distributing condoms and single-use syringes wherever drug users congregate, but that's only a short...