At Guinea’s solely non-public drug rehabilitation clinic, Dr Marie Koumbassa and her 15-person crew are so satisfied that drug use is a nationwide emergency that they work for no pay.
Each week, SAJED-Guinée (Service for Serving to Younger Folks in Tough Conditions as a result of Medicine) receives dozens of misery calls from family of addicts who’re then taken to the ability within the working-class Conakry neighbourhood of Dabompa.
In richer areas of the town, cocaine is the drug of selection. Elsewhere, the prevalent substances are tramadol, crack and – in a latest development – kush, a deadly mix of hashish, fentanyl, tramadol, formaldehyde and reportedly human bones. Individuals who smoke it have been identified to break down, trigger themselves bodily hurt and even die.
“Folks come right here from the madrasa [Islamic schools] and inform us that students instructed them: ‘Take this, you’ll learn nicely and rapidly be taught’,” Koumbassa stated, referring to kush. “It really destroys them.”
The crew first encountered kush in Conakry final March. Its use has now unfold a lot that patrons of nightclubs and lounges are identified to be mixing it into shisha pots.
In contrast to its neighbours Guinea Bissau – seen as a “narco-state” – and Sierra Leone, which is the regional hub for kush, drug abuse and trafficking should not readily related to the extra culturally conservative Guinea. However specialists say a disaster is beneath manner, fuelled by a rising market operated by cross-border trafficking syndicates.
“The gangs in Sierra Leone have at all times moved to Guinea [when necessary], stated Kars de Bruijne, senior analysis fellow with Dutch thinktank Clingendael’s battle analysis unit. “If a gang member dedicated against the law in Sierra Leone or was in any other case being regarded for they’d go to Guinea and conceal out.
“Equally, we’re conscious of boats that generally transfer supplies together with medicine from Guinea to Sierra Leone. There’s actually a full of life cross-border casual commerce.”
Information in regards to the drug abuse and trafficking state of affairs is tough to return by, however in line with a UNODC report, not less than 5.6 tonnes of cocaine had been seized off the coast of Guinea between January 2019 and June 2024. Earlier this yr, Guinean authorities stated they found seven suitcases containing suspected cocaine in a automobile belonging to the Sierra Leonean embassy.
Employees at SAJED say there’s a severe lack of knowledge about treatments and remedy. Nonetheless, the nonprofit has dealt with greater than 500 instances since 2019, when Koumbassa opened the centre after returning impressed from workshops for psychologists in Abuja and Accra.
“We have now sufferers who come from all over the place, from inside the nation, in addition to college students coming back from locations like America and France,” stated Yamoussa Bangoura, the centre’s head of psychotherapy. “We need to prolong our operations to Boké [a city near Guinea-Bissau], and all of the areas. However we don’t have the means.”
Many components are in charge for the drug epidemic, together with poverty and porous borders. Some social employees assume demonstrators towards the junta that seized energy in a coup in 2020 started taking medicine to provide themselves the boldness to take to the streets. Some say the junta’s all-encompassing concentrate on holding on to energy has distracted it from every day affairs of the state.
The size of the issue has overwhelmed Guinea’s meagre capability for treating addicts. The nation solely has two identified state-run centres catering to substance abuse. Through the Covid-19 pandemic, one was closed for a time, overcrowding the opposite.
SAJED’s personal sources are extraordinarily restricted. It could possibly solely take round a dozen sufferers at a time.
The power is generally funded by the individuals who labored there, however it additionally receives small grants from non-public donors and the sale of fruits inside the compound that sufferers assist water every day to maintain them engaged. Gross sales of remedy for therapy offers one other income, however many of the sufferers are poor, so the clinic offers the remedy to them for nothing.
Rented from a member of the Guinean diaspora at a closely discounted price, the compound consists of a single-storey constructing with cubicles inside that function kitchen, laboratory and pharmacy. There may be additionally a small emergency room and one bed room every for women and men, in addition to a typical room with a TV.
“Folks concern to return in generally due to the look of the constructing,” stated Bangoura.
Folks affected by melancholy and alcohol habit are additionally welcome on the clinic. A kind of presently on the facility is Diallo Mahmoud, a 32-year-old whose alcohol habit started as a teen ingesting with elders. Over the past three years, he moved to Abidjan and Brazzaville seeking work, drowning his failures in alcohol.
After breaking a bottle on somebody’s head in a combat at a Conakry nightclub, his siblings referred to as SAJED. Nowadays, he and different sufferers on the clinic talk about life collectively, anticipating a distinct route when they’re discharged.
“After I go away right here, I’ll not drink once more and I’ll preach that to folks,” Mahmoud stated.
Tales like his maintain the clinic employees going, even when the street appears tough.
“We have now come to know that drug consumption is recurrent in our properties, and the layer it consumes probably the most is the youth, the way forward for the nation,” stated Koumbassa. “If we don’t assist them get out of it, it will likely be an issue for the nation.”
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