Relationship of national highway with injecting drug abuse and HIV in rural Manipur, India.

Earlier study reported that about 1% of general population or urban Manipur was injecting drug users (IDUs). A study was conducted to observe the IDU prevalence in rural Manipur and the role of national highway (NH) in determining the IDU prevalence if any. It was also aimed to study the HIV prevalence among IDUs of different villages. Villages were startified in to 3 categories based on distance and communication facilities from the national highway, which cuts across the villages to the neighboring state, Nagaland. Villages close to NH had the highest IDU prevalence of 1.3% and remote villages had the least prevalence of 0.2% whereas villages in between the above mentioned two groups had a prevalence of 0.9%. It was surprisingly observed that HIV was uniformly distributed among the IDUs of all villages and ranged from 50-51%. This indicates that IDU prevalence at distance is predominantly determined by the presence of drug trafficking route/s like national highway whereas HIV prevalence is mainly determined by the needle sharing behaviour of IDUs.