Cape Town - The city wants to do more for people addicted to drugs and alcohol, Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille said during a visit to the Tafelsig Clinic in Mitchells Plain on Wednesday.
“Drug and alcohol abuse is one of the most devastating problems facing our communities. It causes untold destruction and pain to too many families in our city,” De Lille said at the clinic, which includes a substance-abuse rehabilitation section.
She said the city did everything in its power to provide assistance and support for those battling drug and alcohol addiction. Since 2008, five treatment sites have been opened. Khayelitsha, Delft, Parkwood and Albow Gardens (Brooklyn) are home to the centres. The Tafelsig centre, free for patients, costs the city R170 000 a year to operate.
Based on treatment methods developed by a non-profit organisation in the US, the Matrix Institute on Addictions, treatment involves a 16-week structured intensive out-patient programme. The programme ensures that those seeking help can stop abusing substances, stay in treatment, learn about addiction and relapse, receive ongoing support from a trained therapist, become involved in self-help programmes and be monitored.
Treatment involves individual, group and family therapy several times a week.
Warren Burnhams, senior therapist at the centre, said their 80 percent drug-free test rate over the last year indicated the programme’s success. “Anything over 75 percent is an indication of how well the programme is doing.
“The excellent thing is that the rehabilitation facility is based within a health clinic. They (patients) can address all their health-care issues in one go,” he said.
The clinic offered a non-appointment based service – if an addict decided they wanted help, they would be assisted immediately. Recovering ad-dicts are then encouraged to help those who begin the rehabilitation process.
“The clinic sees between 450 to 500 people a year, with anything between 40 and 50 new patients a month,” Burnhams said.
“About 70 percent of people here are addicted to tik. Twenty percent are addicted to heroin and a small percentage addicted to alcohol, Mandrax and dagga.”
De Lille said: “The city’s metro police and law enforcement units work in affected communities daily and undertake specialised operations over weekends against those who continue to distribute and profit off these damaging substances.”
Shafieq Albertus, 31, a former heroin addict, came to the clinic in 2012. “I was homeless. My family had disowned me. I was alone on the street and decided that I needed help, it was time to change my life. I heard about the clinic and it was free so I decided to see what it was like. From that moment everything changed.”
He said he once believed recovery was impossible, but with a great support system and learning of coping mechanisms to beat his addiction he has been drug-free for two months. He is now a student at UWC, completing a substance-abuse course.
lSapa reports that Africans are less likely than their international peers to seek treatment for drug addiction, an expert told the National Substance Abuse Treatment Symposium in Kimberley on Wednesday.
“According to Jason Eligh, of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, only one in 18 people who use drugs in Africa seek treatment, opposed to the world average of one in six,” Social Development spokeswoman Lumka Oliphant said.
The chairman of the Central Drug Authority, Mogotsi Kalaeamodimo, said it was important to dispel the stigma associated with drug-addiction treatment.
The Department of Social Development and the authority organised the symposium to discuss, and develop methods for treating people with drug and alcohol addiction. The department advocated family-based programmes to deal with social problems, including substance abuse and educating communities about drugs.
Cape Times