Operations
AOSI is based in New York City but to better serve Central Asia, the organization created its first regional branch office in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
From 2002 to 2007, AOSI administered United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded drug rehabilitation programs in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the Ferghana Valley Region of Kyrgyzstan. In some cases, the program was tailored in a "culturally appropriate" way to better mesh with local Islamic and Christian and beliefs. According to AOSI:
The countries covered under this program have experienced significant increases in opiate consumption due to geography and recent socio-political events including the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Afghan conflict. Heroin transiting through these countries has created epidemics of drug use, undermining already fragile economies and threatening to overwhelm health systems with HIV. This has also occurred in other nearby former Soviet republics. (The) mission is to engage all levels of society in reducing demand for heroin and other opiates.
The programs differed from locale to locale; examples of measures included were assistance with drug withdrawal symptoms and detoxification, education about the control of hepatitis infection, halfway houses to help people rehabilitate and readjust to living without drugs, and—at the program for drug addicts in the city of Osh -- the use of acupuncture.
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