By Hemant Singh
Chandigarh, India
These centres are poised to strengthen the fight against the drug menace in the state
To overcome the rising scourge of drug abuse in the state, the Government of Punjab has decided to set up 20 de–addiction centres across the state.
These 10 – bedded drug dependence treatment centres, to be set up in each of the 20 civil hospitals of the state, are likely to become operational by the end of this year.
A proposal to establish these treatment centres has been sent to the Planning Board so that it can be included in the annual plan 2010–11.
At present, there are three de–addiction centres in the state medical colleges at Patiala, Amritsar and Faridkot and seven government de–addiction centres in district hospitals at Tarntaran, Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Bathinda, Faridkot, Mukatsar and Hoshiarpur.
“With the addition of 20 bedded de–addiction centres at the civil hospital, fight against the drug menace will be further strengthened,” Health and Family Welfare Minister Luxmi Kanta Chawla said.
In addition to this, the central government is also going to establish drug de–addiction clinics at various places to aid the government’s fight against the drug abuse.
“The Government of India is soon going to establish substitution clinics to prevent inter–venous drug abuse. For that, 20 psychiatrists of the state have been provided training in drug–abuse preventions along with 10 health personnel from four districts at the All–India Institute of Medical Sciences,” a senior officer in the Health Department said.
Recently, the Health Department completed a National Rural Health Mission funded study on drug abuse in the border districts of the state.
The study found that border districts like Amritsar, Tarntarn, Gurdaspur and Ferozpur were high on drug abuse because of trafficking.
In 2009, as many as 15,113 patients were given de–addiction treatment and 2,421 patients were admitted for de–addiction in government de–addiction centers
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