Drug rehabilitation centres need major overhauling
Patients need to be treated with compassion, care
A report published in The Daily Star yesterday revealed a shocking picture of our rehabilitation centres where patients are treated more like "criminals" rather than with care and compassion. According to a patient who had been admitted to the rehabilitation centres in Dhaka and Gazipur several times, "beating, punching and being left to starve as punishment or giving sleeping pills are the ways of treatment in the rehabs." He said that the inhumane treatment in the centres left a deep scar on his mind and that he still has nightmares. Our reporter spoke to 10 such people who were admitted to rehabs and all of them said they had a similar experience.
What is even more worrying are the reports of deaths at the rehabilitation centres. In the last three years, at least 17 bodies have been recovered from rehabilitation centres across the country, according to police data. The recent death of Anisul Karim Shipon, a senior assistant superintendent of Police, at the Mind Aid Hospital, has brought the issue of mistreatment and torture to the fore. Video footage of the incident showed some staff of the centre pinning him down and beating him up until his body became motionless.
According to the Department of Narcotics Control (DNC), there are 351 residential rehabilitation centres across the country, of which 105 are in the Dhaka metropolitan area. Apart from them, there are many more rehabs that are running without licenses. They do not have trained doctors and nurses despite a gazette notification by the home ministry on July 2, 2005 making it mandatory for the centres to have full-time doctors, psychiatrists, and trained nurses. The result is that, rather than helping the patients to overcome drug addiction, they are causing them more stress and mental trauma.
This culture of abuse and mistreatment at rehabs must come to an end. The DNC needs to have a monitoring mechanism in place so they know exactly what is happening inside these centres. A rehabilitation centre must have a psychiatrist, a clinical physiologist, counsellors and other health workers, and there should also be enough space for patients to do physical activities, according to DNC guidelines. The rehabs that are not complying with the guidelines should be closed immediately. Moreover, people's perception about drug addiction must change; we need to understand that drug addiction is a psychiatric disorder, not a crime.