From: The Fix: Addiction and Recovery Straight Up
Greece’s financial crisis has led to an alarming surge in intravenous drug use, overdoses, prostitution and HIV infections, according to experts in the field as well as academics studying the problem. Prior to the crisis, Greece had a historically low prevalence of HIV. But last year, the number of new infections spiked 57% over 2010, according to the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention, spreading most rapidly among a growing population of dirty needle users, among whom the rate was 15 times higher than in 2010. Little wonder, since the country saw a 20% rise in heroin use in 2010—to an estimated 24,100 users from about 20,200 the previous year, according to a report last fall in the British medical journal The Lancet.
“Drug use in Greece was already on the rise before the crisis,” said Alexander Kentikelenis, a public health policy expert at Cambridge University and the lead author of the Lancet report. “What changed after the crisis were cuts to money for needle exchange programs, condom distribution and drug rehabilitation,” he told The Fix. “So you have more people injecting drugs at the same time that you have less money available to cater to the needs of this group, and that creates a dangerous situation…..”
Last February, Greek joblessness hit a record 27.1%, with nearly 1.1 million people out of work, mostly in Athens and other cities. Hardest hit are the young—the ones most likely to turn to drugs and prostitution. A record 54% of Greeks between the ages of 14 and 25 are out of work. With a national debt that is 142% of GDP [gross domestic product], Greece had to borrow $170 billion from the International Monetary Fund under crippling austerity measures, slashing government spending by 30%. “When you have a radical drop in GDP, you need labor-market programs to help these people re-renter the job market and not become the long-term ill and unemployed,” Kentikelenis said.
In Greece, budget cuts in 2009 and 2010 killed a third of the country’s outreach programs to counsel and treat prostitutes, addicts and the homeless. An October 2010 survey of 275 drug users in Athens found that 85% were not in a drug-rehabilitation program. Reveka Papadopoulou, the general director of Medecins sans Frontieres’ Greek branch, said cases of HIV in the city center had gone up last year by 1,450%, according to The Guardian. The medical charity attributed the rise largely to the suspension of the capital’s needle exchanges. [my emphasis]
One Thousand Four Hundred and Fifty Percent!!!
If it were east Africa somewhere, do-gooder German activists with cute glasses would have mobilized an army of health crusaders to do something…
Omonoia Square, Athens
©Angeliki Panagiotou
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Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 
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