Recovering Addicts Battle Kenya’s Exploding Heroin Problem
canada goose uk black friday MALINDI, Kenya Heroin addicts in the Kenyan coastal town of Malindi used to call Mohamed Said Mapera “The Doctor.” He Canada Goose Outlet was one of the first people in the area to inject heroin in the late 1980s, and taught new addicts how to shoot up, in exchange for a cut of their drugs. canada goose uk black friday
uk canada goose These days, ‘The Doctor’ is 46 years old, clean, and a trained paramedic. He works for The Omari Project, a pioneering community based organization in the struggling tourist town of Malindi, providing treatment and support to heroin addicts in this forgotten hotspot of the international Canada Goose online drugs trade. Around half of its staff are themselves recovering addicts. uk canada goose
buy canada goose jacket cheap “He’s the one who used to inject us,” Ummi Khalid, a 39 year old outreach worker at the Omari Project who has been clean for ten years, told The WorldPost. “But now we Canada Goose Jackets work together as colleagues,” she said. Mapera feels sick about those earlier days, when he sat at the center of canada goose clearance Malindi’s heroin epidemic. “I didn’t know myself,” he said. buy canada goose jacket cheap
cheap canada goose uk Mapera hasn’t used heroin since 2007, after spending a year at The Omari Project’s rehabilitation center. “Most of the people in Malindi didn’t believe that I could quit this stuff,” he told The WorldPost. He had been into the drug for so long that he was reduced to injecting heroin into his penis. Now, addicts and their families look to him as a role model. He is living proof that people can recover. cheap canada goose uk
canada goose coats The Omari Project was founded in 1995, named after the first injection drug user in Malindi who canada goose store died after using a contaminated needle. Since then, heroin addiction has been on the rise in Kenya, as the eastern African route for the heroin trade has exploded. canada goose coats
Canada Goose online Most canada goose coats of the world’s heroin is produced in Afghanistan, and reaches markets in Europe and North America via Central Asia and the Balkans. Yet the amount of heroin seized off the coast of Kenya and neighboring Tanzania has increased exponentially in the last six years, leading United Nations’ experts to surmise that the “southern route,” also known as the smack track, is growing in importance to drug cartels. Canada Goose online
Canada Goose sale Last year, for example, a 30 nation maritime force meant to protect ships from pirates seized more heroin in the Indian Ocean than the previous three years combined, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimesaid. The shift, UNODC officials say, is likely due to a canadian goose jacket crackdown on drug trafficking in central Europe and the war in Syria, pushing cartels to experiment with new routes. Canada Goose sale
As more heroin floods into East Africa, more and more Kenyans are getting hooked on the drug. While data on heroin users in Kenya is limited, the UNODC has warned that heroin addiction appears to be on the rise canada goose deals in the country, canada goose black friday sale particularly along the coast, including the city of Mombasa, home to East Africa’s largest port, and the town of Malindi, 70 miles north of the city. The United Nations estimates that around 18,000 people inject drugs in Kenya, with 10,000 of them living on the coast. “It’s clear that the coast is an entry point, and wherever there’s a path, there www.canadagooseonsales.com are some crumbs left behind,” Sylvie Bertrand, regional adviser for HIV/AIDS at UNODC’s Eastern Africa office, told Canada Goose sale The WorldPost.
canada goose coats on sale Heroin first became readily available in Malindi during the 1980s tourism boom. In the 1990s, the most commonly available form of heroin switched from “brown sugar,” which is often inhaled, to Canada Goose Parka “white crest,” which can be smoked or injected. Injection drug use slowly took off. canada goose coats on sale
Today, The Omari Project has a 24 bed rehabilitation center, (which originally was free, but now has to charge patients around $150 per month because of a lack of donor funds), a free outreach program, a drop in center and offers counseling, medical treatment and other forms of support to drug users.
canada goose factory sale The Kenyan government has vowed to crack down on the drugs trade, but buy canada goose jacket few high level arrests have been made. canada goose factory sale
canada goose Though Kenya has made little progress combatting the trade, the countryis gradually moving forward with a groundbreaking shift in responding to addiction. Historically, law enforcement and some drug treatment programs in Kenya, as in many other countries, have focused on eliminating drug use, but now the country is embracing a move towards treating drug addiction as a public health, rather than solely a criminal justice, issue. This includes Kenya’s recent adoption of “harm reduction” strategies, which seek to reduce the health risks and other harms caused by drug use. The concept of harm reduction is new and very limited in Africa out of 42 countries in mainland sub Saharan Africa, only five, including Kenya, have some form of harm reduction strategies, according toHarm Reduction International. Critics argue for example that providing clean needles encourages drug use, or that methadone programs, which alleviate heroin’s grueling withdrawal symptoms, just replace one addiction with another. The World Health Organization, however, says that such measures do not cause an increase in drug canada goose outlet use and are the most effective way of reducing HIV prevalence among drug users. canada goose
cheap Canada Goose Combatting the transmission of HIV cheap Canada Goose is a major challenge for Kenya the country has one of the world’s largest AIDS epidemics. Injection drug users are among those most at risk ofbeing infected by HIV. Some 20 percent of Kenyan injection drug users already live with HIV, compared with around 6 percent of the total population. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose uk shop Organizations like The Omari Project have been at the forefront of Kenya’s shift towards harm reduction strategies. The project introduced one of Kenya’s first needle and syringe exchange programs in 2012, despite initial resistance from both the canada goose community and local buy canada goose jacket cheap police. canada goose uk shop
Canada Goose Outlet Legal confusion has added to the difficulties surrounding the exchange program. While the program is part of a government backed initiative, it remains illegal in Kenya to possess injecting paraphernalia. Canada Goose Outlet
Canada Goose Jackets “There is a contradiction between the right to health, which is enshrined in law, and the criminal laws,” Omari Project program coordinator Showsee Mohamed, 51, told The WorldPost in an interview last month. “But we said we’re going to do it, and we’ll see who will take us to jail. Drug use is an offense, but HIV prevention while using drugs shouldn’t be offense.” Canada Goose Jackets
canada goose clearance Mohamed says the police visited him in response to community complaints several months after the program launched. The police in Malindi no longer interfere with the needle and syringe program, even though pockets of the community remain uncomfortable with it, according to Mohamed canada goose clearance.