Fiji has asked the United Nations for help in tackling a surge in HIV and AIDS cases, fueled by the country’s soaring methamphetamine trade.
At the request of Fiji’s Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, the Regional Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS for Asia-Pacific, Eamonn Murphy, visited the island earlier this month to hold crisis talks with senior government and health officials.
In an interview with New Zealand media outlet 1News, Mr. Murphy said that Fiji’s HIV/AIDS epidemic was “extremely alarming.” Last year, the island recorded 82 deaths from HIV/AIDS and 415 new cases for a population of almost one million. By comparison, New Zealand recorded 97 new cases, for a population of over 5 million. Mr. Murphy confirmed that the “methamphetamine crisis,” as it has come to be known in the Pacific media, was responsible for the accelerating rise in infections.
“We’re seeing young people, teenagers, dying of HIV today and it’s shocking and alarming… We’re seeing 10- and 12-year-olds coming into clinics with positive tests because of drug use,” he said.
One of the most worrying developments contributing to accelerating rates of HIV contamination concerns “bluetoothing”: the practice of sharing blood to get high when quantities of methamphetamine are limited. “It’s not just HIV they’re injecting, but also other diseases, hepatitis, and a whole range of other morbidities, so it’s a direct transmission that accelerates an epidemic like this,” Murphy said, worrying that the phenomenon could spread to other Pacific countries.
Mr. Rabuka said that the government and development partners are planning to set up rehabilitation centers.
Concern for Pacific territories
Last November, the United Nations Asia-Pacific Regional Office issued a statement expressing public health concerns as methamphetamine use increased in the region.
“Pacific island countries and territories, situated between two of the world’s largest drug markets — East and Southeast Asia and the Americas — are not immune to the challenges posed by growing methamphetamine and ketamine markets and the emergence of other synthetic drugs. Although cannabis remains the most widely consumed drug, methamphetamine consumption has increased in recent years, as reported by Samoa and Fiji,” the document states.
“In the first half of this year, we have already recorded more cases of methamphetamine than in the whole of last year,” noted Lanieta Bainiua, Director of the Fiji Police Narcotics Bureau, during a workshop organized by the UN office. “We also seized a significant amount of ketamine for non-medical use, which we hadn’t really seen before in Fiji. It’s clear that the drug market is evolving, and we need to calibrate our efforts to reduce the drug problem as new drugs emerge on the market.”
Fiji Police Chief Scientist Venti Chandra shared information on physical and forensic drug profiling during the workshop, explaining that while they have the forensic capabilities to detect drugs such as methamphetamine and ketamine, detection of other synthetic drugs remains limited. In particular, she called for strengthening the forensic capabilities of the region’s national authorities to better understand the scale of the drug problem.
“One in three children is a drug trafficker”
Representatives of Drug Free Fiji, a non-governmental organization that works with local communities, noted an increase in methamphetamine use in the country, particularly among young people who mainly inject the drug using syringes. “It’s more important than ever to work with local communities and the public health sector to prevent public health crises before they happen. The number of people infected with HIV has risen in recent years and, although the causes are not clearly determined, they can be partly attributed to the increase in drug use,” they said during the workshop.
“We conducted a survey in some communities in 2019 and found that one in three children is a drug dealer,” said Kalesi Volatabu, founder of Drug Free Fiji. “In recent years, we have also observed more young people, including schoolchildren, using methamphetamine, usually sharing a syringe between five people.”
Ilisapeci Veibuli, director of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre, interviewed by New Zealand media outlet 1news, observed with concern the rapid rise in methamphetamine use and says it is now normalized. “People are doing it in public, they’re not afraid of the law,” she said, “I feel like it’s in every home and every community: villages, in schools, kids are using it, students are using it.”
Pio Tikoduadua, the country’s Minister of the Interior, issued a statement last Friday announcing the use of firearms as a deterrent to the upsurge in drug sales and consumption. Earlier this year, nearly five tons of methamphetamine from Mexico were found in two houses on the island.
Drugs as an escape
The problem of excessive hard drug use in Fiji is not new, however. According to the U.S. Institute of Peace, drug-related arrests in Fiji increased 9‑fold between 2009 and 2018, and methamphetamine-related arrests increased 6‑fold between 2009 and 2019.
Speaking at the National University of Fiji last month, Josua Naisele, director of the Substance Abuse Advisory Council, said students start by smoking cigarettes and consuming alcohol and “kava,” a local herbal drink with sedative, anesthetic, and euphoric properties, before turning to hard drugs, Fiji Broadcasting Corporation reported.
The director pointed out that some students use drugs because of pressure from their loved ones, some use it as an escape from their problems, while others are victims or survivors of abuse, sexual abuse, or neglect.