CHANDIGARH: Alarmed by increasing incidences of drug abuse in the state, the

health department has decided to establish de-addiction centres in all district-level hospitals.

Districts bordering Punjab could have more than one de-addiction centre, which could be set up in the community health centres with indoor facilities.

Haryana health minister

said the officials had been asked to give details for creating the required infrastructure in the hospitals for setting up of these de-addiction centres. He said the civil hospitals already providing such services would also be upgraded. “We have started the mapping of drug addicts in all districts,” he added.

According to the report on ‘Magnitude of substance use in India’ prepared by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) this year, Haryana has an alarming 3.5 lakh cannabis addicts, 5.9 lakh people requiring treatment for opioids, 1.9 lakh for sedatives, 35 children requiring treatment for inhalants, and 55,000 addicts requiring treatment for injectable drugs.

As of now, Haryana has 60 drug de-addiction centres. Of these, 39 are manned by private groups and NGOs. The state health department has a total 10 de-addiction centres running from civil hospitals, while the government medical colleges in Haryana have three such centres.

In 1989, Haryana was among the states where Union government had sanctioned the centrally-sponsored de-addiction centres. Later, these centres closed down due to non-availability of funds. Almost after a decade, these centres were relaunched.

The minister said, “We had launched ‘Operation Prahar’ to break the supply chain of various drugs, sedatives and intoxicants. Now, we are focusing on the de-addiction centres for better results. We will have de-addiction centres in all civil hospitals of the state. If required, we will start the de-addiction centres in the CHCs at sub-division level too, especially in districts like

and Fatehabad that are bordering Punjab or the ones where the incidence of substance abuse is quite high.”