Ho Chi Minh City will implement a pilot project for drug detoxification with the made-in-Vietnam herbal medicine Cedemex from September, 2015, said head of the municipal Department of social evil prevention Tran Ngoc Du at a meeting on taking homeless addicts into rehabilitation center organized by People's Committee yesterday.
Mr. Du said that since 2008 nearly 20,000 addicts in 18 cities and provinces across the country had so far been treated with the medicine produced by the Hanoi-based Critical Diseases Research and Treatment Institute (RADINER).
In HCMC, the program will at first treat 200 drug addicts in district 1 and 8, especially those under the social welfare brackets, families whose economic condition is on poverty line or close to poverty line.
As per the project, drug addicts will be detoxified in 7 to 10 days in the Binh Trieu Rehabilitation Center in Binh Thanh District and supervised in families during 6 months.
After six months, drug addicts will be recognized to overcome the addiction and keep under close observation in 12 months to value the effectiveness of the medicine.
It is scheduled that the city will spend VND3.8 billion (US$169,830). Of the amount, treatment cost for one drug addict will be VND15 million (US$670) which include VND14.5 million (US$ 648) on medicine, VND400,000 for meals and VND240,000 for clothes and daily activities.
The project is a part of the city's plan aiming to promote rehabilitation at families and community for addicts who have permanent residence in the city. The government has spent over VND7 billion (US$314,563) on buying 9,500 liter of methadone to widen the rehabilitation program with methadone to serve 8,000 city addicts.
For homeless addicts, local governments have collected them into social rehabilitation centers since December 5, 2014. Deputy Chairman Hua Ngoc Thuan ordered local governments to enhance rehabilitation in families and communes. Police officers should tighten the fight against sales and trafficking of drug.
