Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, July 24

The doctors’ strike has left over 11,000 drug addicts, who are registered with seven Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment (OOAT) clinics for treatment in Faridkot district, in the lurch.

In the absence of doctors’ medication-counselling-peer support services to these patients due to the strike, they are now being given single-day medication by pharmacists at the OOAT-cum-rehabilitation centres.

With doctors’ medication and counselling, these patients were earlier provided take-home medicines for seven days but after the boycott of the OPD and counselling of these patients since Tuesday, the pharmacists can provide them medicines just for a day. To get their dose, the drug addicts stand in queues outside small rooms of pharmacists at the OOAT centres since 6 am daily.

“It is tough dealing with these patients, most of whom are daily wagers. To get a single dose of medicine from the OOAT centres, they keep waiting for 4-5 hours, which leaves them without any work for the entire day,” said Gurdit Singh Sekhon, a social activist . At the OOAT centre in Kotkapura, around 1,000 patients turned up on Saturday to get their single-day dose. Similarly, at two OOAT centres in Faridkot, the number of these patients was over 1,100 today.