From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Thu Oct 17 2002 - 10:48:33 EDT
Intravenous drugs favoured by Armenian addicts, official tells UN seminar
Excerpt from report by Armenian news agency Arminfo
Yerevan, 16 October: During the ongoing UN seminar in Yerevan on drug
trafficking in the South Caucasus, Arshak Papoyan, chairman of the national
centre for AIDS prevention, said that 50.5 per cent of drug addicts
registered in Armenia use intravenous drugs.
Cases of drug abuse have been registered in all districts of Armenia, but
Yerevan has more drug addicts, Papoyan said. Of those registered, 30 people
are infected with AIDS; 44.5 per cent have been using drugs for over five
years; 35 per cent started taking drugs after the age of 35 and 28.5 per
cent were 25 to 29 years old at the time, Papoyan said. The average age of
drug addicts in other countries is 25-32 years. Seventy per cent of drug
addicts in Armenia have families, whereas the same figure for other
countries is 40 per cent, Papoyan said.
[Passage omitted: First case of AIDS registered in Armenia in mid 80s]
The representative of the Armenian Health Ministry's agency for medicines
and medical technology, Armen Asryan, said that in the 1990s Armenia used
neuroleptics 13 times more often than tranquillisers, although the trend in
the rest of the world is in the opposite direction. The reason was that
Armenia had received considerable humanitarian aid at the time. Medical aid
consisted mainly of neuroleptics.
Source: Arminfo, Yerevan, in Russian 1100 gmt 16 Oct 02
BBC Mon TCU 161002 cal/ra
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