In some townships in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, drug peddlers are siphoning efavirenz off from public treatment programs and illicitly selling the antiretroviral (ARV) as a street drug of abuse. Crushed and smoked, efavirenz offers users a high but no medical benefit.
Efavirenz can cause vivid dreams even when AIDS patients properly ingest it, and it may have been a patient who discovered that smoking the drug caused hallucinations. Some of the illicit market may be supplied by AIDS patients selling their own medicine, but efavirenz is also being stolen from patients and pharmacies. Pharmacies stock the drug behind vault doors because of their high black-market value: one container of the ARV can bring $60, and a shelf full is worth $3,000.
"It's extremely frustrating," said the AIDS Healthcare Foundation's Dr. Njabulo Masabo, medical director of a US-funded clinic in the province. "It's extremely ... discouraging because on one end you're trying to fight this epidemic that has ravaged the world so much ... the results are catastrophic." Masabo also worries that smokers of the drug could spark ARV-resistant HIV.
Advertisement
Many abusers of the ARV are students, and in some neighborhoods dealers are on almost every street, selling to students during school hours and just after. One dealer said he earns several times what he could earn in regular job, if one were available. His eight siblings either died of AIDS or were victims of gang violence, leaving him to take care of a large, extended family. "I'm unemployed, four of these years I am not working .... So they shouldn't blame me for what I'm trying to make a living out of," he said.
Back to other news for April 2009
Search the Newsroom archive
.
E-Mail
Printable Single-Page
Glossary
Share
