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Archive -Seychelles

Drug users need hospitality not hostility! |25 February 2017

The Seychelles drug policy is still stringent and punitive and has the main objective of demand and supply reduction. In his Stae-of-the-nation address on February 14, 2017, the President of the Republic Danny Faure noted the need to adopt new techniques by declaring a “new approach which recognises that we need to wage two wars – one to reduce the quantity of drugs entering the country and the other one to reduce the demand for drug consumption in the country..” (1)Although in the recent past, the government has increasingly embraced various public health interventions for reducing exposure to harm by people who use drugs, like the introduction of the needle and syringe programmes and availability of condoms, a lot more still need to be done without necessarily compromising the urgent need to punish the drug trafficking related offences.

People using drugs still face serious challenges including ‘a nearby’ access to basic health and safety services. The biggest setback in the service delivery is the service providers themselves. The reports from the people seeking these services points the fingers to the people who are supposed to serve them turning out to be the one stigmatising them, and this continues to create a barrier causing significant health and social challenges. Whether we like it or not, ‘at one point in time, in every second, someone is using drug in a corner somewhere in this country’! How safe are they using the stuff? They can’t stop at will, they have totally become dependent on it, they can’t do without it at the moment. They have no will power to control themselves! They can do anything from stealing to prostitution just to have it! One once said, “Without a fix, one is like a phone with low battery” (2).Do we help them as they are or ignore them? Why do people still often think that drugs users are criminals who should be locked up, and who cares about their health and rights? Will prison improve their health outcomes?

The time to look at the drug addiction as a chronical disease rather than criminal behaviour is slipping away and the effect is real, health wise and socially. People known with health issues like diabetes, asthma, heart attack, always have their medications ready and is easily accessible to them at any time they feel like having them. They can’t do without them, their life is supported with these medications, they have become totally dependent of them. The drug users go through the same pain and suffering once they don’t have the fix to ease the effect of withdrawal, the worst scenario is when a user is put in the custody and have no means of accessing the fix. The result is fatal and this is not news in Seychelles. Addiction needs to be treated as a disorder and special attention is required.

 

Harm reduction

Harm reduction refers to policies, programmes and practices that aim to reduce the dangers associated with use of psychotropic drugs in people unable or unwilling to break drug addiction.

While the policy makers are dragging their feet, into taking serious consideration to the now widely accepted notion of harm reduction, there is an increase in drug use in the country, coupled with the rising HIV and Hepatitis C epidemic among key strata of the population. There is a need for a critical review of how drug using populations are managed.

At the Montagne Posée prison, anti-retroviral is accessible and inmates can get access to the clinic (CDCU) for treatment and follow-up, condoms are also available in the prison health centre and inmates can get them on request but there are no OSP and NSP being carried out in prison at present according to the recent report (3).

For drug injectors, opiate substitution therapy reduces drug dependence and the frequency of injecting while providing hygienic injecting equipment through needle and syringe programmes reduces unsafe injecting using shared syringes (4).

Montagne Posée prison like any other prison of this world, is easier to gain accesses to drugs rather than necessities like clothing and clean shower facilities. The inmates who use drugs in the prison and are dependent of the drugs are obviously using shared needles. The policy makers need to move with speed to open up to an organised and well supervised OSP and if need be distribution of needles and syringes at the prison. While it is obligatory for the government to provide anti-retroviral for the sick, the same effort should be applied to stop the scourge at the root. The intravenous drug users who use unsterilised needles and syringes are the group of people who are more at risk when it comes to HIV/Aids infections in Seychelles.

Can drug addiction be declared a national disaster in Seychelles and the addicts be seen and handled as sick people who need doctors and not policemen!!!!!

 

John Ondiek

Projects/Programmes manager

for and on behalf of HIV/Aids Support Organisation (Haso)

Sources:

(1) Seychelles News agency February 14, 2017

(2) Report on mobilisers February 14, 2017

(3) Prison visit by chairman of Haso on January 10, 2017

(4)https://www.researchgate.net/.../51168144_The_impact_of_needle_and_syringe_provisi.

 

 

 

 

 

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