THE National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA) has partnered with local faith-based and non-governmental organisations to establish 10 clinics across the island to provide support for substance abusers, persons living with HIV/AIDS and victims of trauma and violence.

Michael Tucker, executive director of the NCDA, said the Community Clinic and Services for Substance Abusers and Family will provide targeted interventions and programmes and referral services. An estimated 5,000 persons are expected to benefit from the services each year.

Michael Tucker (second left), executive director of the NCDA, shows off some of the equipment that will be donated to the Community Clinic and Services for Substance Abusers and Family to Health Minister Ruddy Spencer (left), head of Psychiatry Department and Community Health at the University of the West Indies, Dr Wendel Abel (right), and project volunteers during yesterday's launch at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston. (Photo: Karl McLarty)

"The aim of this programme is to operate a comprehensive intervention programme for children, adolescents and their families at the community level," he said during the launch of the project at the Knutsford Court Hotel in Kingston yesterday.

"The rationale for the intervention comes from observation of risk behaviours, as whether it is drug use, violence and aggression, sexual promiscuity and HIV, all these behaviours or most of them share common contributing factors," he added.

The programme, he said, would seek to teach life skills to adolescents and parenting skills to young parents identified within the communities. Furthermore, it will also upgrade the capacity of counsellors from each NGO and church-based organisation to address and provide counselling services.

This new service, he added, will augment the agencies that are currently carrying out work in this area.

The National Health Fund has provided $11.8 million to facilitate the implementation of the project which is expected to run for two years.
Yesterday, Health Minister Ruddy Spencer said the project represented a new and important dimension of the country's approach to substance abuse prevention and treatment.

"Today we say to Jamaicans who are suffering in shame and silence, that the National Drug Abuse Council is here to assist," he said. "For parents who watch in pain as their children who had promise become mere shadows of their former selves, I say take heart, there is hope. To our young people who struggle every day to find themselves and to break the pattern of drug use, I say, there is help closer than you might think."

The latest figures show that approximately 187,000 Jamaicans are addicted to various substances. However, only a mere 500 persons are treated in existing residential settings each year.

Citing data from the 2006 National School Survey for Jamaica, Minister Spencer said illegal drugs were used by 43.9 per cent of the 4,536 students who were randomly sampled across 70 schools.
He also said that the known link between drug abuse and high-risk behaviours had a significant impact on the public health system in Jamaica.

"Research has shown that a significant number of drug abusers support their habit by illicit means such as simple larceny, housebreaking and robbery with aggravation," he said. "It is clear that a successful substance use and abuse prevention and treatment programme would have a positive impact on cross-cutting areas such as crime, violence and HIV/AIDS."

The project has been endorsed by Dr Wendel Abel, head of the Psychiatry Department and Community Health at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and Rosemarie Lee, public information officer at the NHF.

The clinics will be implemented in existing facilities in Brown's Town, St Ann; Negril, Westmoreland; Port Antonio, Portland; Spanish Town, St Catherine; and May Pen, Clarendon.

Tucker said the communities targeted were based on numerous requests and the record high incidence and concentration of substance users and abusers in these areas.

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