Materia Medica Malaysiana

Decision On Anti-HIV Virus Pioneer Programme After Fatwa

Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said the government will make a final decision on the pioneer programme to give needles, condoms and methadone substitution drugs to addicts in a move to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS after getting an official edict from the National Fatwa Council.
The Deputy Prime Minister said the government had asked the fatwa council to undertake a study on the implementation of the controversial programme according to Islamic jurisprudence.
"The National Fatwa Council is studying (the programme) according to Islamic jurisprudence...give the National Fatwa Council a chance to come up with an official fatwa," he said when opening the 30th annual general assembly of the National Association Against Drug Abuse (Pemadam) at the Banquet Hall of the Perak Darul Ridzuan Building, here Saturday night.
The cabinet had earlier decided to implement the pioneer programme of the Health Ministry beginning October this year because it considered the HIV/AIDS scourge in this country had reached the "emergency" level.
However, the programme was disputed by various quarters especially religious leaders as well as Pemadam who feared that giving the methadone would not help efforts at eliminating drug addiction.
Najib said the government's proposal to implement the programme was also in accordance with the two principles of Islamic jurisprudence namely the fact that the situation had reached an emergency level, and the permission to choose between the lesser of two evils.
The problem of HIV infection in the country had now become a serious threat and had reached a critical stage which could lead to an emergency situation because the spread was going on an upward trend, he said.
"The Malaysiam graph is rising whereas countries such as Australia, whose population equals that of Malaysia, is registering a decline...now 64,000 Malaysians are infected with HIV, if this trend continues in the next two or three years, between 200,000 and 300,000 people may be infected," he said.
The Deputy Prime Minister said that based on Islamic jurisprudence, in an emergency situation that could lead to death, anything that was forbidden could be permissible.
He said if the HIV virus was not controlled, hundreds of thousands of people could become victims and this was much worse than efforts at controlling that we would like to give a try.
Najib said the treatment using methadone, for example, was found to be successful in other countries including Muslim nations such as Iran which had succeeded in curbing the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus.
He said such an approach had been recommended by the United Nations as a new method in addressing the problems of drug addiction and HIV virus.
He said he had been told by a medical parctitioner that this approach had a success rate of 80 per cent in rehabilitating addicts whereas the success rate of the Drug Rehabilitation Centres was only between 10 and 15 per cent.