BUJUMBURA, May 25 (ABP) – The Burundian Alliance against AIDS and for Health Promotion (ABS) in collaboration with senior officials of the Burundi National Police (PNB) organized on Thursday May 24, 2018 an exchange and debate workshop on reduction of disasters linked to the use of drugs in Burundi.
Psychologist Pierre Claver Njejimana of the Kamenge Neuropsychiatric Hospital who came as a consultant, said that a drug user is characterized by a change of behavior in thought, dressing, mood. He is a person who has a bodily negligence, who does not know how to put in place a rational way of life like the others, he explained.
Drug users are people who steal goods from the house, sell all the items they find in their path, even their clothes and shoes to find money to buy the drugs.
They are people who no longer trust anyone at the family level and at the level of those around them.
He said that in Burundi, drug users are seen as failures of society. The medical management of these is still at the embryonic stage. He winked at the police executives who were there that to jail a drug user is making the situation worse. People who have taken the drugs should be considered as sick in the same way as others. They must consult the caregivers to help them to regain their normal health like the others.
People who have been fortunate enough to be cared for and followed can recover their normal life and go about their activities as normal people and achieve sustainable development of themselves, of the family and also of society. . As this group of people ranks among the first to catch and transmit HIV / AIDS, prevention upstream and downstream with coordination or synergy from all sectors is needed.
He did not forget to advocate for the Burundian police in order to have sufficient training for all the drugs, their varieties, their consequences, the behavior to adopt before people who take drugs.
The police in turn demanded that the ABS, the local administration and others who are able to help them identify the drug providers to penalize them and the places of consumption of the drugs in order to destroy them.
