Freetown, Sierra Leone (AP) – In a vast discharge from the capital of Freetown of Sierra Leone, smoke sways on decades of decomposition waste. Zainab is sitting there, folding through the soot. It is his usual place to buy Kush, a cheap synthetic drug ravaging the young people of the country.
“This Kush is so addictive,” she said. “If I don’t smoke, I feel sick.”
Her current house, a wavy taume hut, contains only a tatter mattress where she brings her customers as sex worker. She uses her income to maintain her drug addiction.
It is one of the many women in Sierra Leone who, following social factors which include living conditions and stigma, did not benefit from intervention efforts after the government declared a year ago a public health emergency on the rampant abuses of Kush. The declaration aimed to apply criminal, public health and prevention measures to reverse the trend in Sierra Leone, while Kush spreads to other parts of West Africa. The medication was seized in Gambia, Senegal and Guinea.
Public health emergency in Kush
While officials say Kush has become rarer in the streets in Sierra Leone, criticisms say that the programs are still subsidized and inadequate.
Despite new criminal, public health and prevention measures, only around 300 people followed the country’s official rehabilitation program, according to available data. Most were men.
Women were less visible in the crisis. Rights defense groups say they are historically left out.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, only one out of 18 women with drug disorders receives treatment for one in seven men. The agency said women are generally more vulnerable to sexist violence, economic discrimination and human rights violations.
Fewer women receive help
The situation is not so different in Sierra Leone where various plea groups explained how women are not as visible as men to present themselves to receive support and are often not obtained. Much more men, however, consume drugs compared to women, say the experts.
Zainab said five years of smoking, Kush had been ashamed and isolation. She said that no one had helped her and spoke of days when she became so high that “I did not know what was going on around me”.
But she wants to stop for her children. One night at work, the flames swallowed their house with the two infants inside. They survived, but she entrusted them to an orphanage, haunted by fire.
“I would love to hear my children calling me again mom,” she said, her marked face raging with a smile.
Kush is a depressant. Its short and intense effect often leaves insane users. Symptoms of dependence range from wounds to psychosis. The problems of liver, kidneys and respiratory are common.
Kush is difficult to fight
The evolutionary composition of the drug, the low cost and the general availability make it difficult to combat Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in the world. A recent report of the global initiative against transnational transnational crime earlier this year revealed that almost half of the samples of Kush tested contained opioids up to 25 times stronger than fentanyl. The content of the medication was largely unknown before, hampering response efforts, experts noted.
Kadiatu Koroma of the local women’s foundation for non -profit women said that her organization had seen an increase in drug use in women and girls in recent years.
“When they are very sleepy … Men will just enjoy it,” she said. Left vulnerable after using the drug, women “are imbued and they do not even know the men who did it”.
25 drugs of the drug
At the Kissy psychiatric hospital in Sierra Leone, health workers have described by meeting 25 different stumps of the drug in the freeotown region in the broad sense.
In one of the two women, nurse Kadiatu Dumbuya said that 90% of Kushicomans she had attended in her six years in the hospital had “sold their bodies” to feed the habit.
And yet, among the 50 people – the majority of whom are Kush users – who have deposited in one of the two rehabilitation managed by the Government of Sierra Leone a recent day, only three were women.
Only 300 people have reached the seven -week program at the Hasting Military Center since its opening in February 2024, kept by the army and surrounded by barbed wire. Only 40 of the beneficiaries are women.
Managers say that the program is sensitive to gender, men and women separated by a fence. However, the staff said that stigma and family pressure mean that women often deny their dependencies and refrain from requesting support.
A drop in the ocean
“In most cases, we have 10% of girls who come to our attention. This does not mean that girls are not drug addicts … They feel shy in their communities,” said Ansu Konneh, who works with the Social Social Ministry of Sierra Leone.
“It’s a drop in the ocean,” he says.
Due to funding challenges, an “ambassador” program for the centers recovered from the center is in a standstill and admissions have been interrupted for five months. When he resumed, some of the parents on the waiting list for 2,000 people said their children died.
Among those who desperately take place of help, Melda Lansana, who said he had visited the ministry several times to obtain a place of rehabilitation for her 18 -year -old daughter Khadija.
“When I took it, I couldn’t wash myself, I couldn’t take care of myself,” said Khadija, recalling the relief of the days spent in the center last August.
Without money for school, she has trouble putting her life on the right track. Due to family tensions, she chose to live “in the streets” with her boyfriend.
She swears she is clean. Her mother suspects that she still uses.
Funding challenges slow progress
Progress against Kush is slow, much like other parts of the world where the fight against synthetic drugs is often difficult.
Officials recognize that the government has struggled to provide livelihoods or commercial support to facilitate reinstatement, in particular for beneficiaries without formal education – a step that defenders say would help women.
Last year’s emergency declaration, welcomed by civil society, has helped move the approach to care punishment, but the answer is only “65% of what it should be,” said Habib Kamara, director of social ties for young people and children, a local non -profit organization involved in the fight against drug use.
The organization is one of the few to have offered targeted support to female users, in particular vulnerable populations such as sex workers, through community support, free family planning and beauty sessions to help strengthen trust.
“We have to meet the women where they are,” said Kamara.
Marie Kamara, 19, rejected Kush for another drug – Tramadol, which experts have warned is also dangerous. She considered Kush as too risky and was discouraged by the stench of her friends and the oozed wounds.
One night, she said, she and her friend Yabu were continued by a Kush dealer. Marie escaped. Yabu did not do it.
“They raped her … just because of Kush,” said Marie.
Months later, Yabu died of drug effects, said Marie – his second friend lost Kush.
“Let me not die like them,” said Marie. “I pray.”
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