Quick action urged on Afghan drugs to head off AIDS

KABUL, Feb 1 (Reuters) Quick action is needed to fight Afghanistan's growing drug addiction problem to head off an HIV/AIDS crisis in the shattered country, leading health agencies said today.

''If not, we will be facing a widespread epidemic,'' Afghan Red Crescent president Fatima Gailani said in a statement for the opening of a new addicts treatment centre in Kabul.

The Nawai Zwand (New Beginning) centre on the city outskirts, near the police training academy, is a joint operation with the Italian Red Cross and the European thinktank the Senlis Council.

Amid warnings of another record opium crop after a 60 percent jump in 2006, a UN report released last year estimates almost one million Afghans -- about 4 per cent of the population -- are drug users.

That report gives no figures for previous years, but drugs workers say anecdotal evidence from the field show numbers rising, especially among refugees returning home.

''Drug addiction is an increasingly worrying issue in Afghanistan and we hope this new treatment centre will contribute to Afghanistan dealing with this growing problem,'' said Senlis founding President Norine MacDonald, who attended the opening.

''Many of the returnees are now injecting heroin and this poses a major threat in terms of HIV/AIDS transmission.'' Afghanistan does not have a long history of intravenous drug use and the UN report, by its Office on Drugs and Crime, found most had started injecting while in Pakistan or Iran.

The most popular drugs include opium, hashish, pharmaceutical drugs and heroin.

Nawai Zwand is modelled on an Italian centre, Villa Maraini, that treats up to 700 people a day and where methods include needle exchange and methadone substitution.

UNAIDS, the United Nations HIV/AIDS group, says there are fewer than 50 known infections in the country of 24 million, but little information has ever been gathered in a country racked by 25 years of war and conflict and most experts say the problem is much greater. Pakistan and Iran have thousands.

REUTERS AKJ HS1941