Bohol’s community-based Center for Drug Education and Counseling (CDEC) estimates only 2 % of the current 38,152 drug surrenders who would be needing a facility-based drug rehabilitation.

This means, CDEC sees a little less than a thousand Boholano drug dependents needing to get through a facility based drug rehabilitation center.

Of the same figure, CDEC estimates 47% or some close to 18,000 of the “surrenderers” at moderate risk and would need to complete the town based 6 months of rehabilitation.

Another 51% or some 19,500 drug surrenders would only need 3 months of barangay based drug rehabilitation, which can happen outside a facility.    

The community would be responsible for them, CDEC Center Head and Capitol Health Services Consultant said, speaking at the Kapihan sa PIA, Thursday. 

And when President Rodrigo Duterte, along with the private sector has worked to generate funds for the establishment of a 500 bed facility in Carmen, then the problem in Bohol may not be that bleak.

Early this year, at the Gov. Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital, Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco and Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Ubial witnessed the signing of the 550-bed Bohol Drug Rehabilitation Center set to rise inside the military reservation site in Carmen.

The facility would be the country’s second drug rehab center, next only to the one built in Nueva Ecija, after President Duterte  puts up steps to address the health concerns of the government’s drug war.

In Bohol, in consonance with a provision of Provincial Ordinance No. 14 series of 1997 which calls for the establishment a drug-help center, Governor Edgar Chatto led the opening and activation of the CDEC last October.

CDEC conducts counseling, psycho analysis, and spiritual enrichment in an effort to help drug dependents who are either slightly or moderately affected by the vice and chooses to seek help, explains Center Head Dr. Cesar Tomas Lopez at the Kapihan sa PIA, Thursday.

Manned by a psychiatrist, a medical doctor, two nurses, three psychologists, two social workers, four policemen and volunteers, the CDEC is also the center for screening those who want help.

The screening uses a World Health Organization and thus internationally accepted Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) to determine Brief Interventions needed for each individual.

ASSIST uses some 8 questions, and from one’s answers to these questions, evaluators can now categorize the degree of affectation of an individual.

With this process, CDEC said after about 4 months of operation, they have roughly estimated 47% of the 38,000 as moderately affected and another 51% least affected and are at the low risk category, Dr. Lopez said.  

Dr. Lopez, who also sits as Capitols consultant on health services went on further: Bohol’s Community based Drug Rehabilitation Program without walls (CBDRPWW) only works for the moderately and slightly affected.

CBDRPWW is a community based drug rehabilitation program that “works on poverty, demands no experts because we have no psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors,” according to Tagbilaran Bishop Alberto Uy.

Under the CBDRPWW, those who have been found to be moderately affected are placed under a six months community based drug rehab while the slightly affected can pass through a three-month rehab regimen. (rac/PIA-7/Bohol)