Drug Addicts Open to Fraud

By Priya Yadav

CHANDIGARH: A recent study conducted by UN AIDS reveals that that over a tenth of the 20,000 intravenous drug users in Punjab are HIV positive. This has highlighted the shocking casualness and lethargy in dealing with the most crucial issue facing health authorities today – that of drug de-addiction. Even as NGOs and police set free inmates confined in shocking conditions at fake centres, the state machinery is yet to figure out whose subject de-addiction is – health or social welfare.

Not a single survey has been conducted in Punjab to ascertain the number of such illegal centres. “The centres are being run at the most impossible of places. One of them about which we informed the police was being run from a room inside a factory,” said Arvind Thakur, a lawyer whose NGO has helped bust 11 fake deaddiction centres and ‘rescued’ over 300 people. It is believed there are about 20 more centres in Mohali with about 20 to 80 operating in each district.

In October 2006, the police along with human rights activists raided Paras D-addiction & Rehabilitation Centre in Mohali, which spilled the beans on how drug addicts were subjected to torture. Unfortunately, it did not prod the state into action.

However,there is still ambiguity on which government agency is supposed to issue licenses. Health & family welfare secretary TR Sarangal told TOI: “Drug de-addiction is not a health subject at all – it is within the social welfare department’s purview.” A senior department official, requesting anonymity, said, “It is a health subject. The social welfare department does fund drug de-addiction centres but issuing licenses for them probably comes under the Mental Health Act.”

Punjab health minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla said, “It is a huge drain on the families with drug addicts. There are cases all over the state of young men selling off ancestral land to support their habit where their old fathers were no longer able to engage in agricultural practice.”

So what does a legal drug de-addiction centre have to certify it is competent to deal with the problem of de-addiction? Says Atul Ambekar of AIIMS’ National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre: “There should be a doctor, a psychiatrist as well as paramedical staff available around the clock. Nursing staff and an ambulance are also a prerequisite.”

Ambekar, who heads the only unit of its kind that trains specialists in dealing with addicts, said, “Most centres make the folly of taking in an addict and straightaway detoxifying him. Ideally the procedure has three phases – stabilization, reduction and then detoxification.”

Till the government clears the air on an agency to regulate deaddiction centres, these illegal places will continue to wreak havoc with people’s lives.

(c) 2008 The Times of India. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.