Standardize rehab of drug users – PHO

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Provincial Health Office is looking at standardizing the system in rehabilitating drug pushers and users who have surrendered to authorities.

PHO and Cebu Provincial Anti-Drug Abuse Office (CPADAO) have been training government social workers and health professionals so that they can properly manage the "intervention" needed for drug surrenderers.

 Both offices are conducting the trainings for barangay health workers (BHWs), municipal health workers (MHWs), as well as personnel from the province's 16 district and provincial hospitals for psycho-educational treatment and life skills training.

Dr. Ismael Niño Pastor, Provincial Health Office chief on public health, said they have tapped all the barangay and municipal health workers throughout the province to help in assessing the drug surrenderers. They will determine if the surrenderers need rehabilitation and treatment.

The actual interventions training for BHWs focus on surrenderers with severe levels of addiction.

 As frontline workers, Pastor said they are ready to administer profiling as well as conduct counseling on the surrenderers.

 Nurses and other medical personnel in district and provincial hospitals, on the other hand, are being trained to administer medical attention to surrenderers suffering from withdrawal symptoms or psychosis due to drug use.

 There are 8,000 barangay health workers, 67 municipal health workers, and 6,000 midwives who serve as "force multiplier" in the rehabilitation process.

 The 14,000 workers will seen to augment the over 200 nurses, around 130 doctors.

 Pastor said even if the health and barangays workers are helping out in the said undertaking their hands are already full with their regular jobs. 

 "We have to understand nga even now puno na na sila, dengue lang daan wala na hurot na ilang katre, 3 na gud ka pasyente kada katre. So the best effort is kani gyud sa prevention," he said.

 He said the lack of rehabilitation center in the province is also a challenge for the Capitol, saying that 10 percent or at least 4,000 of more than 40,000 surrenderers need to be rehabilitated. (FREEMAN)