Baseline assessment of community knowledge and attitudes toward drug use and harm reduction in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Introduction And Aims: Problem drug use has been identified as a significant public health problem in Afghanistan. The study aim was to assess community knowledge and attitude toward drug use and harm reduction in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Design And Methods: A cross-sectional convenience sample of community representatives of 10 possible professions were recruited, distributed between the 17 Kabul city districts in 2007.

A qualitative assessment of injection drug use and harm reduction programmes in Kabul, Afghanistan: 2006-2007.

Background: The purpose of this paper was to examine the context of injection drug use in Kabul, Afghanistan among injection drug users (IDUs) utilising and not utilising needle and syringe programmes (NSPs).

Methods: Following identification of themes from eight focus group discussions, free-lists were used for further exploration with both NSP using (n=30) and non-NSP using (n=31) IDUs.

Results: All participants were male, had been injecting for 5 years (mean), and most (95%) had been refugees in the past decade.