Two Years After Launch, AIIMS Team To Assess Punjab De-Addiction Centres
CHANDIGARH, 12 NOV 2019:
For strengthening its drug de-addiction programme, the Punjab government has decided to get its outpatient opioid-assisted treatment (OOAT) clinics evaluated by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.
This will be the first such exercise since OOAT clinics — a key component of the state government’s drug de-addiction programme — were launched in October 2017 to provide free treatment to addicts. The evaluation will be carried out by a team led by Dr Atul Ambekar, professor at National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre (NDDTC), AIIMS. Dr Ambekar has held meetings with Punjab principal secretary health Anurag Agarwal and also submitted the concept note.
The evaluation will be conducted through site visits and the team will ascertain the clinics’ performance and the programme’s relevance.
After completion of the assessment, the team will submit a report highlighting the strengths and weakness of the programme.
Since their launch, OOAT clinics have evoked positive response and is providing treatment to over 1.10 lakh patients, out of 2.50 lakh patients undergoing treatment for addiction in the state. Despite yielding promising results, the programme has been bogged down by few shortcomings.
The acute shortage of psychiatrists is one of the main hurdles in making the drug de-addiction programme more effective. With the number of psychiatrists limited to about 50 in the government set-up, authorities have deployed MBBS doctors in OOAT clinics after imparting mere five-day training.
As the present OOAT set-up does not allow the doctor to examine each patient in detail, experts, time and again, have been raising the issue that MBBS doctors are not qualified to effectively diagnose mental health symptoms of a substance-use disorder patient. The clinics are also short of counsellers and pharmacists.
Because of rigid procurement norms, authorities also struggle to maintain uninterrupted supply of detoxification medicine to these clinics, which are visited by about 600 patients daily. According to a senior official, the government needs to widen the reach of the programme, which it is struggling to do at the moment. Of 7.5 addicts, only 2.5 lakh are undergoing treatment.
Punjab health minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said the evaluation is being done to improve the existing programme and make it more effective. “The government will take corrective steps recommended by the AIIMS team in the evaluation report,” said Sidhu. ET Healthworld