Number of children below 18 years injecting with drugs rises

Experts have sounded an alarm over the rising number of children below 18 years injecting with drugs.

Data released by the National Aids and STI’s Control Programme (Nascop) on Monday show that more than 3,900 young people aged below the age of 18 are injecting with drugs.

The total number of people injecting with drugs in the country stands at 35,784 with the data showing that 15 per cent of them are women.

Of greater concern is that the people injecting with drugs share needles and syringes leading to a rise in HIV infections, especially among the youth.

According to experts, sharing needles, syringes, or other drug injection equipment puts people at risk for getting or transmitting HIV and other infections.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that HIV can survive in a used syringe for up to 42 days, depending on temperature and other factors.

“Young people have a lot of challenges in this country; for someone to inject drugs they must be very idle and not having much to do,” manager key populations at Nascop Mary Mugambi said.

There are also social challenges, the control by parents is also an issue because they are left on their own and using drugs of but of course the presence of the drugs themselves is also an issue in terms of control and being able to not have drugs in the communities,” she added.

Substance use disorder has been linked to risky sexual behavior and puts the users at risk for getting viral hepatitis.

“The effects of drugs are not only just HIV but they also do raw harm to the body from organs and also bringing other infections such as hepatitis C,” National AIDs Control Council CEO Ruth Laibon-Masha said.

Kenya started a programme dubbed Medically Assisted Therapy (MAT) in 2014 to look at how to manage the large number of people who inject drugs in the country.

The programme that employs use of methadone as a harm reduction currently there are 11 clinics in seven counties across the country that provides medication daily to this group.

The seven include Malindi, Mombasa, Lamu, Kwale, Nairobi, Kiambu and Kisumu.

The Medically Assisted Therapy which is given daily, thus posing as a challenge since some of those recruited into the programme tends to drop out.

To date, close to 10,000 patients have ever been recruited into the programme with just 8,000 who are active after some either dropped out or completed the dose and are no longer using drugs.

To curb the dropout rates, the government has come up with the use of vans van which are used to take the medication to the people within communities.

“The drug we target is heroine because that is the drug they use to inject and that is the commonest. The risk for HIV infection is only with heroine through injecting but we don’t say we don’t deal with the ones who are not injecting.”

The methadone being used in the country is liquid and currently funded 100 per cent by the Kenyan government.

Syringes are bought by Global Fund and distributed by the Kenya Red Cross.