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The situation with drug abuse is dramatic
 

In our country, besides the great number of negative events that are part of our everyday life and affect us as citizens, parents, friends etc., there is a situation that is a blot on the landscape, throw us in despair and makes us think how to deal with it. Namely, it is about a massive drug abuse and other psychotropic substances, with special emphasis on intravenous users, who, unfortunately, in certain regions of the country intensify up to epidemic ranges. Harmful consequences for users’ health and possibilities for spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and other diseases, even more dramatize the overall picture in my town Bitola, in my country Macedonia, in the region.

It is about a global problem where not only the biological being has been attacked, but also the social and psychological, too. How can NGOs deal with this plague of the 21st century that attacks and destroys the most fragile, the most perspective tissue in our country – the youth. How and why do the state and its institutions react or should react to this undesirable phenomenon? How do the present international factors in the country react or should react both for them and us? (“I am doing you good so that it can be good to me” – Niche.)

2,5 years ago within the project for decreasing damages from using drugs, titled: “HIV/AIDS prevention among drug users and people with risky sexual behavior in Bitola”, in cooperation with “HOPS” – Skopje and “Izbor” – Strumica (whose precious experience and cooperation has made it easier for us to start the project in cooperation and supervision by IHRD from New York), “VIA VITA” from Bitola started a hard terrain work of equipment exchange and its destruction. Two field workers are included and one social worker as responsible for field work. The project is run by two coordinators – a psychologist and a psychiatrist.

In the beginning it seemed that the things were simple, but when you face the width and depth of the problem, you realize that you are helpless in many situations. As the project was running, the team was acquiring experience, both from direct working and seminars and exchanging experiences with other non-governmental institutions. Plain exchange of equipment and their destruction did not mean that we finished our job, in spite of the fact it is an important thing. On the contrary, there occurred the need for free and anonymous testing and advising for HIV/AIDS and hepatitis and the state, that is the department ministry provided a possibility within the health protection bureaus, taking place continuously.

The need for free and anonymous testing for drug presence at young people is becoming more evident and in future we will have to find a solution similar to the previous. Taking into consideration the fact that the drug users’ social status is mostly unsolved, there is a need for a legal regulation solving their status. Resocialization and providing a descent place for their gathering is only partly realized.

Finally, we come to the problem of medical treatment of intravenous users that is regulated only in the Center for addictions in Kisela Voda, Skopje, where they have trained teams, but insufficient to meet growing requirements, resulting in the need for opening such and similar centers for methadone treatment, making easier the approach of the interested ones. It all happens in cooperation and control of the Center for addictions in Kisela Voda. An initiative is raised in cooperation with the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health, to create a possibility in Bitola to open a Center for advising and treating drug users.

We hope that the assets from the Fund Global, exclusively directed towards solving this problem, will efficiently and properly be allocated in the Republic of Macedonia, thus providing continuous running of these projects. The need for bigger networking NGO in the country, their cooperation with the regional centers (we cooperate with the Republic of Bulgaria), permanent education of the health and other personnel as it has been so far, is an essential need. It is not immodest to say that the lion’s part of the problems, for intravenous users, has been done by the non-governmental sector and as a partner to the state institutions it helps decreasing and solving certain situations.

There are a lot of priorities in our country and the region, but one of the most relevant priorities for solving this problem is the overall engagement of the non-governmental organizations and governmental institutions, that is, opening a front in the battle with this undesirable situation.

 

D-r Omer Sulejman

Center for civil society development VIA VITA – Bitola