KABUL, Nov 19, 2006 (AFP) - With eight HIV positive cases in 2001 and 61 today, Afghanistan is worried a growing use of heroin will add the spread of AIDS to its long list of problems inherited from decades of war.
The Central Asian country is better known as the world's top producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin: about 92 percent of opium comes from Afghanistan's poppies, the United Nations says.
But the fall of the Taliban in 2001 has led to the return of refugees initiated into drug use in camps in neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.
A domestic market has developed, with heroin of good quality made in secret laboratories inside the country and costing relatively little -- at about 300 afghani (six dollars) a gramme compared to 50 afghani for bread.
Counternarcotics Minister Mohammad Zafar said the number of heroin users in Kabul jumped from 7,000 in 2003 to 14,000 last year.
"Forty to 50 percent of refugees use heroin and 20 to 30 percent hashish," he said, putting the total number of drug users in Afghanistan at about one million of its roughly 30 million inhabitants.
"There is a problem because production is always rising. The drug mafia, which could not be operating without protection at a high level, is everywhere and always wants to produce and sell more," Zafar said.
Drug money was also financing anti-government militants including the extremist Taliban, he said.
AIDS could follow the rising drug use, mainly because needles were being shared. Farid Zama, of the Nejat detox centre, said up to 10 people sometimes used a single syringe.
There were 61 confirmed cases of AIDS in Afghanistan today, of which 18 were women and 15 drug users, Health Minister Saifour Rehman said.
"There are between 1,500 and 2,000 suspected cases," he added, with the majority of them using drugs. The shared needles and also the time they spent with sex workers meant they were more likely to get HIV and AIDS, he said.
Rehman, also a doctor, worried about an explosion of the disease.
Authorities were pushing the AIDS 'ABC': Abstinence, Be faithful and wear a Condom, he said. The B is the easiest to get across in this culturally conservative country where religious authorities have a strong influence.
Three nongovernment organisations and a public hospital are also trying to head off what could become a bigger problem for destitute Afghanistan.
The Nejat and Zendegi-e-Nawin detox centres and a section of the Kabul mental health hospital run programmes to help users kick their addiction. Together they have 40 beds for a course that lasts between 10 and 15 days.
The treatment is harsh: shaved heads for hygiene and so hair cannot be torn out in the throes of withdrawal; prison-style uniforms; and cold showers prescribed when the pain gets too much.
French nongovernment group Medecins Du Monde (Doctors of the World) has meanwhile been distributing injection kits since October to cut the risk of disease. The kits are handed out at known places of use and at a centre run by former or currents users.
Heroin substitutes like methadone are not authorised in Afghanistan.
"With the absence of control that we have seen with the disintegration of the country, methadone could find its way out of the pharmacies and into the underground market," said Zafar.
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