Getting high on Sustiva (Efavirenz) in South Africa
The BBC reports on South African Children as young as 15 shooting up with grounded HIV anti-retrovirals sometimes mixed with painkillers and marijuana.
“I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked at first, these were school boys in their school uniforms,” documentary-maker Tooli Nhlapo told the BBC World Service’s Outlook programme.
“They take a pill and grind it, until it is a powder. Some also mix it with painkillers and others mix it with marijuana,” said Ms Nhlapo. “They showed me how they roll it and smoke it.”
The pills are either bought from nurses, patients or stolen. It seems that smocking the pills has hallucinogenic and relaxing effect.
Looking at the side effects of Efavirenz, which include dizziness, insomnia, impaired concentration, somnolence, abnormal dreaming, euphoria, confusion, agitation, amnesia, hallucinations, stupor, abnormal thinking, and depersonalization, this is rather unsurprising. The consequences are that some HIV infected people are not getting their treatment, other are not properly adhering to it and all are exposing themselves to a resurgence of the virus in their body with serious consequences.
According to Dr Kas Kasongo, an advisor on an anti-retroviral drugs panel in South Africa, the phenomenon is widespread in townships.
Human imagination and despair have no limit.
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