Experts warn that drug use may increase after lockdown
|Published
PROFESSOR Monique Marks, head of the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology, said drug use was expected to increase after lockdown. PROFESSOR Monique Marks, head of the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology, said drug use was expected to increase after lockdown.
Durban - DRUG use will continue to increase after the Covid-19 crisis has passed said an academic yesterday, who is part of a programme that helps the homeless kick their drug habit.
Professor Monique Marks, head of the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology, was speaking at an event where the eThekwini municipality discussed some of the efforts to help homeless drug users to recover at its shelters across the city.
Deputy mayor Belinda Scott said the programme was operating
from Moses Mabhida Stadium and Albert Park, where 260 people are being treated for their drug dependency. The programme is a partnership with NGOs.
Marks said drug use was not a black problem but cut across all sections of society. She said heroin - used in whoonga and sugars - was first a
problem in areas like Chatsworth and Phoenix, and has spread to
other townships across the city.
Marks, who is also a TB/HIV care expert adviser, said the Covid-19 pandemic did not make things any better. She felt that when the lockdown ended there was a possibility of some people going back to using drugs.
With this possibility they were looking to train leaders within the shelters and emergency personnel how to administer drugs like naloxone to help treat people who had overdosed.
The programme was one of two in the country.
Psychiatrist and director of the Durban Pain Clinic Dr Shaquir Salduker said the lockdown put all the homeless in one place in the city, giving them an opportunity to start a new life.
He said the detox programme for the homeless took anything between three to six weeks.
Another factor that helped them was the poor quality of heroin used in South Africa, which made it easier to quit drug use.
The programme was reaping awards Salduker said. Before the programme, they had about 30 to 40 people absconding from the shelter daily. Since the programme started, this no longer occurred.