16 Philippine Showbiz Today
Special Feature
April 8 - 21, 2018
Former drug users turn a new leaf
by Jose K. Lirios
PST Manila Correspondent
resident Rodrigo Duterte
P
vows to end the illegal drug
problem in the Philippines within
three to six months, a campaign
promise he made and a relentless
war he is willing to wage against drug
pushers and users. Within his first
100 days in office more than 700,000
drug users and pushers surrendered
while over 1,300 drug suspects were
killed in more than 23,000 drug-
related police operations since July
of last year.
But the drug war in the
Philippines does not come without
a cost. President Duterte keeps on
telling stories to the Filipino people
about how illegal drugs like shabu
can destroy a person’s health and
way of thinking, a problem that
should really be addressed through
professional medical approach and
not through force and violence.
With the government’s relentless
war against illegal drugs there has
been an influx of drug dependents
that are not just voluntarily
surrendering to the police but also
submitting themselves to various
rehabilitation programs. But as the
number of drug dependents rise do
we have enough health facilities and
drug rehabilitation centers in the
country?
The Department of Health
(DOH) Treatment and Rehabilitation
Center (TRC) in Taguig City, currently
the biggest drug rehabilitation center
in the Philippines, currently houses
more than 1,400 patients—almost
triple from its original capacity of
550 patients. How did President
Duterte’s
anti-drug
campaign
affect the number of patients who
come to the DOH Treatment and
Rehabilitation Center?
“It has a very big effect on us.
Our rehabilitation center actually has
a 550 bed capacity as authorized
by the Department of Health. But
previously on any given day we were
already having 1,000 cases on any
given time and we have the man
power for 1,000 patients. When
the anti-drug campaign started the
number of our patients increased and
right now we have more than 1,400
patients and it even peaked at 1,500
patients and it has put a strain in our
dormitories and also on the staff.
But we have reacted to it by putting
in more dormitories and we are in
the process of hiring more people
and funds, supplies have also been
coming in. More importantly for those
that are not really heavily addicted
they can go into a community
based program. Community based
programs would entail the institution
of support services, livelihood
projects and programs, community
service and of course the monitoring
of the patients,” said Dr. Bienvenido
Leabres,
Addiction
Medicine
Specialist, DOH-TRC.
Who will be the best candidate
for this program of the DOH-TRC?
Leabres explained that first and
foremost it is very important to make
an assessment of a patient. The
DOH has already trained more than
100 doctors in the National
Capital Region (NCR)
alone to be able to
access the patients.
One must also take
into account the
patient’s level of
drug use. Are they
just experimenters,
are they occasional
users? Or have
there been changes
in the brain called
neuro adapt