KOCHI: Prathyasa Bhavan, a de-addiction centre run by Prince Augustine in Thodupuzha, has come a long way in helping alcoholics kick the habit. As a recovered alcoholic, Augustine is painfully aware of the growing social menace and laments about the state’s government’s inefficiency in allocating funds to de-addiction programmes.
In the past six years, his de-addiction centre has provided treatment to more than 2,000 alcoholics. Every month, 10 new addicts seek admission at his centre. “Government facilities alone cannot hold the patients as every year the number of alcohol abusers are on the rise,” he said. Successive governments have failed to wake up to the grim reality of the rising number of young drug and alcohol addicts, he said.
“The government has to come up with a comprehensive support system to help professionally run de-addiction centres. The government is spending money on awareness programmes. Such programmes are good, but what people want to see are how the addicts can be brought back to the mainstream and how their families are saved,” he said.Augustine said that he had been knocking on the doors of both the state and Central governments for funds for offering treatment to more number of addicts.
Kerala Mental Health Authority (KMHA) secretary Dr Jayaprakash agrees. “It’s true the government runs de-addiction centres attached to district and medical college hospitals, but they won’t be able to offer treatment to all the addicts in the state,” he said.“There are instances where in professionally run de-addiction centres have lost out on government funds, while illegal ones continue to receive government money some way or the other.”
In 2015-16, the Subodham project implemented by the state government had a financial outlay of `78.80 crore.While the official records of the KMHA show that there are only four licensed de-addiction centres in the state, data with the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment show that there are 24 such centres in the state that have been receiving Central funds under a scheme for Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts.