COME November, the Department of Health (DOH) is already looking to inaugurate the Mega Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in Nueva Ecija to house the large number of former drug dependents looking to change, according to Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial.
“We hope to open that Mega Treatment and Rehabilitation Center, with a capacity of 2,500, in the near future,” said Ubial.
She said they are even set to hold a job fair on September 22 at the Robinsons Starmills in San Fernando, Pampanga.
“The job fair is to open the positions for personnel who will now help us in staffing the new mega treatment and drug rehab center,” said Ubial.
The DOH chief said the mega treatment and drug rehab center will be a good complement to their 13 treatment and rehabilitation centers, which are already filled with patients.
“We are actually beefing up the capacity of our 13 rehab facilities that actually has doubled the number of capacity that can admit,” said Ubial.
She pointed that the new drug rehabilitation facility will be useful considering that there are already more than 700,000 drug surrenderees nationwide.
However, the health chief said that only about 7,000 of the massive number of drug surrenderees require treatment inside rehabilitation centers.
“About 90 to 95 percent of the surrenderees will actually fall in the community-based rehab; and about 2 to 3 percent of them are outpatient; and about 1 to 2 percent are in the residential rehabilitation program,” said Ubial.
She explained that those committed in the residential program are those considered to be in “complicated or advanced” form of drug dependence.
On the other hand, Ubial said those falling in the community-based rehabilitation are those that can be already be assisted by barangay officials and social workers since they are just “experimental users”.
Meanwhile, she said the out-patient component are those referred to primary healthcare professionals but need not be placed in rehabilitation facilities.
Ubial also said they are already hastening with the training of health professionals that can provide community-based rehabilitation to drug dependents.
“In August alone, we have trained about 1,300 health professionals in the country to do the brief counselling and assessment,” said Ubial. (HDT/Sunnex)