{"id":5920,"date":"2019-10-15T08:42:39","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T05:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=5920"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:36","slug":"women-using-heroin-in-kenya-why-its-important-to-intervene-early-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/10\/15\/women-using-heroin-in-kenya-why-its-important-to-intervene-early-in-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Women Using Heroin in Kenya: Why It\u2019s Important to Intervene Early in Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By<\/strong> Catherine\nMwangi<\/strong> and John Gachohi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heroin is the main drug<\/a> taken\nby injection in Kenya. Mostly found and used in Kenya\u2019s big cities \u2013 Mombasa\nand Nairobi \u2013 it\u2019s hard to know just how widespread heroin use is. But\nestimates range between 18\n000<\/a> and 33 000<\/a> people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are concerns that heroin use is growing but also\nconcern over the high HIV infection rates of users, particularly among women.\nInjection drug behaviours are recognised<\/a> as\nkey facilitators of HIV transmission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research conducted four years ago among people who inject\ndrugs in Nairobi found\nthat<\/a> 18.3% of them were HIV positive. Of these, 16% of men were HIV\npositive and 44.5% of women were HIV positive. Women who inject drugs are\ntherefore more than two times more likely to have HIV than men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nresearch<\/a> sought to understand why and how young girls and women\nprogressed from using legal drugs \u2013 like alcohol and cigarettes \u2013 into illicit\nnarcotics, like heroin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We found that most women were introduced into drug use by male sexual partners in their teenage years, between the ages of 11 and 17 years. A key factor in their continued drug use was these, often volatile, relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our findings also gave us insights into why women were more\nat risk of HIV infections: they often faced significant stigma which meant they\nwere less likely to participate in drug treatment or needle exchange programmes\nand they usually depended on male partners for drugs and needles. This meant\nthat they shared equipment. In addition, many of the women participated in\ncommercial sex work to fund their drug habit and often didn\u2019t use condoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The high HIV prevalence among women who use drugs is not\njust an issue in Kenya. The same can be seen in Senegal \u2013 13.0% versus 3.0% for men<\/a> and\nin Nigeria (37.7%\nversus 7.4%)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read\nmore\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Catherine Mwangi and John Gachohi Heroin is the main drug taken by injection in Kenya. Mostly found and used in Kenya\u2019s big cities \u2013 Mombasa and Nairobi \u2013 it\u2019s hard to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}