ARVs 'smoked as drug'
2007-05-12 14:36
Special Report
The South African government has announced a joint venture to reduce the cost of anti-retroviral drugs with a Swiss company.
Durban - Thugs in a KwaZulu-Natal community are robbing people living with Aids of their lifesaving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs -- and then smoking them to get high, the Saturday Star reported.
Patients collecting their ARVs at St Mary's Hospital outside Pinetown have complained to community outreach co-ordinators that people are stealing their Stocrin, a commonly-used ARV, and using it to get high.
They reportedly mix it with dagga and smoke it.
"People of all ages are stealing it from patients and smoking it together with dagga," the newspaper quoted community worker Nancy Sias as saying.
She first heard of the thefts in January, but was not aware of it happening on a large scale.
Health and HIV/Aids professionals at Johannesburg's Helen Joseph Hospital, the Esselen Street clinic in Hillbrow, the Aids Consortium and the Treatment Action campaign said they had not heard of people using Stocrin as an illegal drug.
- SAPA