Govt de-addiction centre sans medicine

Manmeet Singh Gill

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 8

The government-run Drug Rehabilitation Centre known as the Swami Vivekananda Rehabilitation Centre at Government Medical College here has not purchased Buprenorphine tablets, a medicine given to drug addicts as a drug substitute, for the past more than four months.

As a result, the daily OPD list at the centre has shrunk from 400 to 60-70 patients. The addicted patients are now purchasing the tablets from a private rehabilitation centre near Gala Mala Chowk on the road leading to the college.

Insiders said the private centre is run by a family member of the head of the government-run rehabilitation centre, Dr PD Garg, and the lack of medicine at the government facility is apparently helping the private centre grow. One of the insiders said he had talked to the Civil Surgeon today and apprised of the problem.

However, Dr Garg stated that ‘his son is working at the centre but he does not own it’. “The medicines are not coming from the government warehouse. We have put up the demand many times,” he said, adding that as soon as these are made available by government, they would start the distribution. He said he is not doing anything to help the said private centre. “I cannot stop a 40-year-old from working with a private centre. He has his own life. The allegations about me helping him are false,” he said.

The government had earlier last year ordered that the district drug de-addiction societies would purchase the tablet from the government warehouse and not from the open market. The society earlier purchased Buprenorphine from the market and gave it to the patients at a cost of Rs 35 per tablet.

The private centre too is giving medicine for the same cost. A patient coming out of the centre, Kulwant Singh, said, “I was earlier enrolled with the government centre, but now when they do not have the medicine, we have shifted to this centre.”

The Civil Surgeon, Dr Pardeep Chawla, said, “Normally the centres put up orders directly with the warehouse. It’s been the first call I received from Dr Garg on the issue today and I would take up the issue with the state authorities during the video-conference meeting tomorrow.”

The principal of Government Medical College, who is also the secretary of the District Drug De-addiction Society, Dr BS Bal said, “We have received a written complaint in this regard from a local resident. The investigations are being conducted.”

Deputy Commissioner-cum-secretary of the District Drug De-Addiction Society Basant Garg said the matter would be investigated. He added that if the allegations are found true, strict action would be taken against the guilty.