Vietnam to increase treatment for drug addicts

HCM City (VNA) - Despite difficulties in its implementation, Vietnam is utterly resolute in its plan to scale up the number of facilities that provide voluntary and diversified services of treatment to 200,000 drug addicts by 2020.

“Our principle is to use many different methods of drug addiction treatment, but aiming toward voluntary treatment,” Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Trong Dam said at conference to collect opinions for a draft of a decree on voluntary treatment for addicts held late last week.

Addicts, who are brought to establishments providing compulsory treatment, fail in voluntary community-based treatment, Dam said.

The push to boost drug rehabilitation solutions comes amid several recent high-profile escapes by patients at compulsory rehab facilities. Last month, about 600 patients broke out of a facility in Dong Nai province. Government authorities said some facilities suffer from overcrowding, a lack of staff and poor conditions.

Dam said that many provinces and cities focus on bringing addicts to compulsory facilities and when these facilities become degraded over time, "escaping is unavoidable."

He instructed them to carefully select which addicts should receive community-based treatment and which ones should go to compulsory facilities.

The government has sought to diversify treatment services and scale up voluntary treatment in community to reduce compulsory treatment, he added.

Regarding the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affair’s plan for the development of rehabilitation establishments for drug addicts from now to 2020, the number of rehabilitation facilities that provide compulsory treatment for addicts will be reduced to 71 by 2020, and will serve just 20,000 addicts from 67,000 in 2015.

The plan aims to convert the remaining 52 rehabilitation facilities which provide compulsory treatment into those which provide voluntary treatment.

Thirty private rehabilitation facilities providing voluntary treatment are expected to be built by 2020. About 22 private establishments have been provided licences during the last 14 years.

The ministry plans to issue new regulations on voluntary treatment to make it more effective. The draft regulations were collected opinions from relevant agencies at provinces and cities at the conference.-VNA