Pubdate: Sun, 02 Apr 2006
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2006 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper.
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Chiaki Kawajiri, Sun reporter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

ROUGH CURE FOR A TERRIBLE SCOURGE

In Rural Thailand, AIDS and Addiction Are Treated With Chains, Herbs,
Prayer and Talk

Pattani, Thailand - For many who live in Baltimore, the city seems
like ground zero in the global war on drugs, with a multitude of
victims and their families paying a bitter price in lost lives and
shattered dreams.

But users here are not alone. In Europe, Africa and Asia, millions of
addicts and their families face similar struggles with the drug
plague, many with far fewer resources than are available here.

Shackled by a chain, 25-year-old Sukri Masae lies on a thin mat in the
jungle at the Ponoh School mental asylum and AIDS treatment center
here, suspended somewhere between the drugs and violence of his past
and an uncertain future.

The center is one many primitive treatment facilities scattered across
Thailand. They are a last hope and refuge for thousands of victims.

Masae was brought to the private center a month ago by his parents,
whom he beat repeatedly while under the influence of drugs. Most
patients are brought by their family and cannot leave until the center
determines that they are cured.

In an open-air shed near Masae there are seven more young men, chained
side by side - some reading, some sleeping.

Norden Kosenk, 31, plays with a kitten and shares his food, and
20-year-old Arom, wearing a camo T-shirt, sways in a hallucination and
pretends to shoot a gun into the air.

Beyond the shed are brick rows of private cells with a few more
patients sitting in the doorways.

"Drugs come from everywhere: from Burma, from Laos, from Malaysia,"
says Nuriyoh Chitae, who runs the center.

With the closeness of these countries - long major global sources of
addictive drugs, including heroin, cocaine and an array of other
destructive compounds - Thailand faces one of the greatest drug
problems in the world.

Wearing a Muslim headscarf and holding her 2-year-old son, youngest of
her 10 children, Chitae is calm as she describes the tragedies that
surround her. But there are tears in her eyes when she talks about her
late husband, Zakariya Chitae, a Muslim religious teacher who started
the center 10 years ago.

Determination shows as she explains her work to keep this center open.
"I need to save these people. Just as my husband wanted."

The treatment here is simple: chains, herbs, prayers and
talk.

"I know the Westerners would bring up human rights issues, which is
too bad," Chitae said, "because it works."

Chitae prepares the herbs and food. Her relatives, volunteers and
former patients help to feed, talk and pray with the patients. Chitae
claims a 60 percent to 80 percent success rate, but the herbal
treatments are not government-approved, and Chitae's many pleas for
government funding have not been answered.

When patients come, their family leaves them with 1,200 baht (a little
more than $30) to pay for the four to six months of treatment Chitae
says is typically required to cure them. If patients still don't feel
ready after that period, she sometimes uses her own savings to feed
and treat them. Patients come not only from neighboring provinces but
also Bangkok and even Malaysia.

Pattani, where the center is located, and two neighboring provinces,
Narathiwat and Yala, are the three southernmost provinces in Thailand.
They have large Muslim populations, and life there has been marked by
continuing political and religious violence that has claimed more than
3,000 lives since January 2004. Buddhist monks have been murdered,
local teachers shot, soldiers and officers beheaded, and shops and
temples firebombed.

Chitae said she has not been affected by the public violence. The
violence she and her patients care most about is that caused by drug
addiction. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake