KUALA LUMPUR: Female drug users in Malaysia are being left behind by the health care and social support services that focused more on men.
Because of this, a study found that many such women had to fend for themselves, thus putting them at risk of intimate partner violence and being stigmatised by society.
“Women who use drugs have unique problems not faced by male drug users. Alarmingly, one-fifth of the women interviewed reported experiencing intimate partner violence.
"They often have their children removed from them, either by welfare officers or extended family members including in-laws.
“They are stigmatised and seen as ‘bad people’ simply because as women, they are expected to be the care-takers and anchors of their families.
"This was one of the issues brought up by the women we interviewed in our study,” said Malaysian AIDS Council (MAC) policy manager Fifa Rahman who conducted the study with her colleague Sarah Iqbal.
Launched on Thursday, the study - Everything On My Own: A Policy Brief on Women Who Use Drugs in Malaysia - looked at the lives of 38 women from Penang, Kelantan, Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Johor.
The study pointed to the need for government agencies to work together to provide adequate services for women drug users.
“Many of the women interviewed started drug use when they were very young. The youngest began shooting heroin when she was nine years old.
"So we are also talking about drug use among children as well. Many of these women dropped out of the school system but the issue is that this was never detected.
"Nobody, not the school or the education office or welfare services questioned why they stopped coming to school.
“There needs to be a monitoring system. We need a safety net, a system in place that can catch things like this before it becomes a problem,” said Fifa.
The study recommended that counselling services for women be integrated within drug treatment centres (including assistance to domestic violence services).
“We must stop criminalising drug use. We’re not calling for the legalisation of drugs but punishing drug users is not going to help the problem. If we send them to prison, we’re perpetuating the cycle,” said Fifa.
MAC president Datuk Dr Raj Karim said the council would call for a consultative meeting with the relevant authorities.
“It’s a complex issue that is overlapping. We need to strengthen interagency collaboration between the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, Education Ministry, Health Ministry and the Home Ministry to address this issue,” said Dr Raj.
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