Marseille 2007
| Abstract #507 - HIV risk and Tanzanian IDUs evolving strategies in response to the rapidly changing heroin market | ||||
|
Session: 41.1: Drugs Alcohol and Potions (Parallel) on Tuesday @ 16.30-18.30 in 3 Chaired by Jeffrey Weiss, Biljana Ristic Authors: Presenting Author: Dr Sheryl A. McCurdy - University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, United States |
||||
| Additional Authors: Prof Gad Kilonzo, Prof M. Leshabari, Prof Mark Williams, | ||||
| Aim: The Tanzanian AIDS Prevention Project with injection drug users (IDUs) in Dar es Salaam has provided us with the opportunity to examine the ways that drug practices are changing in response to new governmental policies developed during 2006 to crackdown on illicit drug use. | ||||
| Method / Issue: Semi-structured, face-to-face interviews (n=94) conducted in Swahili with 38 female and 56 male IDUs between February 2003 and December 2006 elicited thick descriptions of Tanzanian IDUs, attitudes, and beliefs about HIV and its relationships to other topics, most particularly intentions to safer needle and sexual practices. Media reports concerning drug trafficking, drug seizures, arrests of drug users and drug barons have also been tracked since 2005 to provide further textual documentation of changing policies and how they relate to drug use and sexual risk practices. Verbatim transcribed interviews and media reports were analyzed in ATLASti using the constant comparative method. | ||||
| Results / Comments: At the beginning of 2006, the government crackdown on the movement of heroin through the national airport and media reports of increased seizures of drugs and the individuals carrying them were followed by IDUs concerns that heroin had become increasingly difficult to purchase. Reportedly heroin had become increasingly adulterated and prices had increased. By December, as IDUs noted the government successful efforts to minimize drug trafficking through airports, they also reported shifting movements of heroin from air to land routes. As the police stepped up their efforts to arrest sellers and IDUs in shooting galleries, IDUs shifted out of shooting galleries and back into open spaces, abandoned buildings, new construction to inject. During the legislative session in November, members of parliament began discussing the problem of drug trafficking and accusations about knowledge of drug barons by some MPs headlined newspapers for weeks along with reports of a government list of suspected drug traffickers that were being watched. As arrests of suspected traffickers, users, and sellers escalated during December 2006, patterns of heroin sale and consumption changed. Sellers and IDUs moved out of protected spaces and onto the streets to buy and sell heroin. Since August 2006 many IDUs no longer inject in shooting galleries and instead are injecting in precarious unprotected spaces, although some manage to inject in their homes. | ||||
| Discussion: HIV prevention and safer needle use interventions in urban Tanzania must take into account that in this environment, where there is no free opioid treatment center, heroin users in quickly adapt to changing government policy and practices in their efforts to sustain their drug use and avoid experiencing withdrawal symptoms. | ||||
| Go Back | ||||
