Rehab center sees deluge of patients

DAGUPAN CITY—The only government-run facility for drug treatment and rehabilitation north of Metro Manila anticipates a deluge of referrals as confessed drug users and pushers surface in growing   numbers each day.

Dr. Joseph Fama, head of the clinical department of the Department of Health’s Treatment and Rehabilitation Center (TRC) here, said there was a sharp decline in supply and demand for drugs in communities near the rehabilitation center.

The surge in referrals also prompted TRC officials to draw up a contingency plan for increasing referrals.

The 300-bed, P160-million center caters to drug dependents from the Ilocos, Cagayan Valley, Cordillera and Central Luzon regions, said Dr. Delfin Gubatan, TRC director. It was funded by the DOH, with financial support from the Dangerous Drugs Board and from the pork barrel of then Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.

Only male patients who are at least 18 years old are admitted. Female drug dependents are screened and endorsed to the TRC in Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.

Raymund Basbas, TRC administrative officer, said most patients were professionals and those coming from rich families. “Right now, we have a policeman, a nurse, an engineer, an accountant, a lawyer and even a Filipino-American,” he said.

Since it started operation in July 2014, TRC has graduated 169 patients.

Like any government hospital, the center has  socialized rates. It can also accommodate 150 indigent patients.

“If [a drug referral] is an outpatient, then he will have to come here every week for six months,” Gubatan said.

Patients are usually kept at the center from six to eight months, depending on their addiction level, he said.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and nurses, trained and accredited by the DOH, attend to the patients.

The center is surrounded by a concrete fence and is well secured, Gubatan said, but he added that it was not being run like a prison. “We don’t even consider this a facility,” he said.

Each day at 5 a.m., all 149 patients are required to exercise. After breakfast, they proceed with the day’s scheduled activities like lectures, counseling sessions and medical examinations.

“There’s not a single moment that they are idle here,” Basbas said. “We keep them busy.”

“We do not treat them as patients,” said Basbas of the addicts.

Basbas said the public must know that in a drug rehabilitation center, “we do not electrocute our patients.” “We do not ask them to sit on a block of ice and they are not prisoners,” he said.