To match Insight AFGHANISTAN-WOMEN/DRUGS
An Afghan woman holds up opium as she attends a counseling session at the Nejat drug rehabilitation centre, an organisation funded by the United Nations providing harm reduction and HIV/AIDS awareness, in Kabul January 29, 2012. With little funding and no access to substitution drugs such as methadone, treatment is rudimentary at Nejat for a problem that is growing in a dirt-poor country riven by conflicts for more than three decades. Opiate consumption in Afghanistan, where it has long been a medication but in recent years has been used increasingly for recreation, is also on a sharp rise. Nejat estimates around 60,000 women in Afghanistan regularly take illegal drugs, including hashish and marijuana. Shrouded in stigma, female drug users is a topic that is almost never mentioned in Afghanistan. Picture taken January 29, 2012. To match Insight AFGHANISTAN-WOMEN/DRUGS REUTERS/Ahmad Masood (AFGHANISTAN - Tags: DRUGS SOCIETY HEALTH)