A US $167,000 pilot project envisaging prevention of HIV among female injecting drug users (IDUs), spouses of male drug users, and female prisoners in Pakistan was finalised at a signing ceremony here on Tuesday.
Senior Joint Secretary (Ministry of Narcotics Control) Hassan Masood and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (Asia) Chief Jean-Luc Lemahieu signed and exchanged project documents in the presence of Minister for Narcotics Control Nazar Gondal and Secretary K B Rind.
The pilot initiative complements the government’s efforts for prevention of HIV among IDUs and in prison settings. Its primary objective is to enhance the quality of services being provided to female injecting and non-injecting drug users in the community. The project will provide services to 1,000 female drug users, 5,000 spouses-families of drug users and 500 female prisoners.
The project will work to bring about an improvement in prison settings. Rather than establishing new harm reduction services, the project will focus on improving existing facilities to overcome problems of access on account of the presence of male staff. A new female-specific health referral system will also be constituted for the purpose. Staff and outreach workers will be trained to manage these services.
Talking to ‘The News,’ Project Director Dr. Nadeem-ur-Rehman said harm reduction services would be established in two female prisons to start with. These prisons will be identified after an assessment. Other than that, gender-sensitive drop-in centres and three mobile units exclusively devoted to accessing female injecting drug users will be operationalised.
Dr. Nadeem said gender training courses in harm reduction service delivery for prison staff, peer counsellors and spouses of male injecting drug users, who are at greater risk, will be conducted as a key component of the project. The project also seeks to build the capacity of institutions within the government and civil society in order to deliver quality services to the target populated.
Tuesday’s ceremony was unique in the sense that what was supposed to be a press briefing witnessed representatives of the government and UNODC signing the project document, and within the wink of an eye, walking out of the committee room without uttering a word about the project. Mediapersons looked at each other in awe, wondering why they had taken the trouble to be there in the first place. The ceremony did not last more than three minutes, and as such, deserves to be recognised as the shortest-ever event convened by any ministry!
Coming back to the project, it is part of UNODC’s Strategic Programme Framework for Pakistan 2007-2010 and has been conceived as a joint programme under the umbrella of ‘One UN’ pilot initiative. It covers the joint programming area 5 (related to HIV and AIDS) of the health and population thematic working group. The Ministry of Narcotics Control, Anti Narcotics Force, national and provincial HIV/AIDS control programmes, and provincial prison departments are the collaborative government agencies in the project.
According to the National Drug Abuse Assessment 2006, there are estimated 125,000 injecting drug users in Pakistan. Of these, 50% are married. ‘The Hidden Truth,’ a study conducted in Lahore, Sargodha and Faisalabad in 2007 by NGO Nai Zindagi, reveals that the majority of married injecting drug users has regular and unprotected sexual relationships with their wives and 25% of them reported symptoms of sexually transmitted infections. Fifteen percent of the wives of HIV positive IDUs are already infected. A majority of the wives participating in the study was not aware of HIV or AIDS and did not know the modes of transmission of HIV.