FEROZKOH (Pajhwok): Drug addicts in western Ghor province are appealing for their treatment at a time when the main rehabilitation facility here remains shut. Officials, however, promise the facility is being operationalised.
The hospital’s admission ward stopped functioning a year ago due to non-availability of funds. The ward remains closed to date.
Mir Ahmad, a 34-year-old man who sat with other addicts in a park in Ferozkoh, the provincial capital, said he had been addicted to narcotics over the past eight years.
A 12th grader, he has a special interest in poetry. “Since my childhood, I have been an ardent lover of poetry. But being the eldest child in the family, I started working because my father could not do son.”
Ahmad recalled: “I went to Iran for work and my roommates there were bad people, who lured me into addiction to different illicit substances.”
He often recites poems to please his colleagues. “We are suffering a lot due to being addicted. People, including our families, have isolated us. I want youth to avoid taking drugs.”
Tired of addiction, he often thinks about how he can relinquish the contemptuous habit. Unfortunately, he is consuming more drugs these days because of the non-availability of rehabilitation facilities.
Palpably disappointed with his current situation, the man appealed to well-off individuals to help him with rehabilitation so that he returned to normal life.
Abdul Ghafoor is another man who relapsed into addiction after the closure of the only rehabilitation centre in the province stopped functioning. “All of us would have been normal people if the hospital had been active.”
At an early stage of addiction, he said: “I was hospitalised for 20 days and nights. Initially, I didn’t feel well.
“But I gradually improved with help from doctors. When the hospital’s admission department was shut, all addicts were discharged and they returned to addiction.”
Abdul Ghafoor and Mir Ahmad asked relevant government officials to re-activate the 20-bed rehabilitation facility in the province.
Hospital Director Dr. Mohammad Umar Lalzad said: “Unfortunately, our patients are now seen in in parks and other places, consuming drugs. We don’t have enough medicine. We are presently promoting awareness and medical treatment at home for some addicted women and girls.”
Officials, however, pledged to re-activate the hospital in the province, saying efforts were being made in this regard.
nh/mud
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