Assessment of drug users’ risk practices in Temeke District, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Deviation=3461) with an important variation of estimates. The minimum is 40 individuals and the maximum is 10,000 individuals. Based only on the information of six persons, the median estimate of number of heroin male users is 567 and females 33 only (Table 3). Table 14: Estimation of the number of heroin users in Temeke district in 2011
Mean Median S.T. Minimum Maximum
all heroin users n=22 2,597 1,100 3,461 40 10,000
Males n=6 1,870 567 3,083 30 8,000
Females n=6 361 33 803 25 2,000
Heroin Market
According to interviewees, Temeke is only a distribution district for "big bosses" living in others districts, mainly Ilala. A stable type of dealing structure exists since the early 1990s: "[...] the same dealers who sold the brown sugar also started selling the white. The main change was in the product itself not the dealing networks". They confirmed also that Temeke heroin market is dominated by nuclear dealing organisation. It is composed of more or less independent individuals or small inner families dealing networks. Each of these individuals or families sells in a fixed ward or camp. The most well known dealing sites in Temeke are: Sharif, Sheraton, Kwa, Zakhem, Maputo, Charambee, Stereo, Kwaa Zizali, Temeke hospital and Tandika. A street dealer has estimated at up to a hundred the number of small dealers like him in this last mentioned ward (Tandika). Types of heroin available Three types of heroin have dominated Temeke heroine market:
Brown sugar (heroine base) disappeared during the first half of the 1990s;
White (heroin hydrochloride) which is currently widely used in Temeke. It is a small rock sold in a plastic single dose package (see photo). The most common designation of heroine is ingada (from the Arabic word, salvage). The other street names are Nyeupe (white), Wanga, Dawa (medication sawahli and in arabic), kimondo and mbango. While the heroin base is chemically prepared for smoking (heating resistant), the hydrochloride one is prepared to fit only with injection (dissolved in water).
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