No Opiate Substitutes For the Masses of IDUs

摘要

On Easter Sunday, Sergey Nenov, along with hordes of other people in Odessa, took a basket filled with sprinkle-covered frosted cake, cookies, and other offerings to a gold-domed Orthodox church and lit candles in prayer. But when Nenov came to a gilded painting of the Madonna and Child, he separated himself from the crowd by pressing his lips to glass that protected the Christian icon. Nenov had reason to be grateful this year. He is one of 4300 opiate addicts in the country to receive methadone, a substitution treatment that has freed him from his dependency, allowing him to stop having run-ins with the law and, at long last, begin to tackle his dual infections with HIV and tuberculosis (TB).