April 13, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 6, 1429

PESHAWAR, April 12: The rehabilitation centre for drug addicts in the provincial capital is facing problems and is on the verge of collapse.

“The centre lacks even basic facilities including detoxification and qualified staff,” sources said here on Saturday.

The centre is being run by the government’s Social Welfare Department and the detoxification facility was being provided in collaboration with the Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar, which is no more available, they claimed.

Drug addicts are first admitted to the hospital for detoxification, which is the first step in treatment of a patient. A patient is treated there for prescribed number of days and then sent to the centre for rehabilitation.

Sources in the Social Welfare Department said that the centre was carrying on detoxification on its own since the health department withdrew the facility for unknown reasons.

“Drug addicts at the centre are just motivated through speech as there are no qualified staff and facilities of detoxification at the centre. In the absence of a qualified doctor, a first aid dispenser was doing the detoxification of newly-admitted drug addicts,” the sources said.

The 20-bed centre was set up by the former provincial government in 2003. In 2007, it was handed over to the district government and since then the Lady Reading Hospital has stopped providing detoxification facility to the patients.

Despite repeated efforts, the concerned officials at the Lady Reading Hospital could not be contacted for comments.

Meanwhile, an official of the centre claimed that they had rehabilitated about 510 drug addicts but could not provide the number of relapse cases. “There are relapse cases since the drugs are available in this part of the country but we prefer to take new addicts instead of taking relapse cases,” said the official.Despite the fact that government set up five rehabilitation centres for drug addicts at Peshawar, Dir, Kohat, D.I. Khan and Nowshera the number of drug addicts is as high as ever. According to the Anti Narcotics Force, the number of drug addicts was about four million in 2006-07 including 500,000 heroin users and 60,000 injecting drug users all over the country.

“Unfortunately the youth aged between 20 and 35 are drug addicts. It is a life time treatment and if the family support is not there, the patients reverse to old habit of addiction,” said Nabi Chamkani, treatment coordinator at Dost Foundation, working for treatment and rehabilitation of addicts.

Due to lack of proper facilities at the centre, many drug addicts head towards private hospitals and organisations. One such non-governmental organisation in Peshawar receives at least 70 drug addicts per month who go through a systematic and long process of detoxification, rehabilitation and prevention.

“The patients have chemical dependency so they often start using the drug again due to social, psychological and biological reasons.

There is skill development training and counselling so that they don’t start using drugs again,” said Mr Chamkani and disclosed that female drug addicts were being treated at his residence.