Int’l Day against Drug Abuse: We need to revive ‘dead’ rehab centres in Ghana – Rehab centre manager

The issue of drug abuse and illicit trafficking remains a challenge in Ghana and as a result of that, many addicts end up in rehabilitation centres to seek help after the situation gets out of hand.

Manager of the House of Saint Francis Rehabilitation Facility, Walter Damien Asooh, has bemoaned the appalling state most rehabilitation centres in Ghana are in.

According to him, these centres which include both government and private owned ones, are rotting away due to lack of financial assistance.

He continued that the centres are mostly run with internally generated fund as management awaits kind-hearted persons to donate to them.

“Most rehab centres in Ghana are in a deplorable state. That is because they get very little or no support at all…looking into it, I feel that a lot of people think people in this situation have caused their own problem so they wouldn’t want to help them,” Walter Damien Asooh stated in an exclusive interview with GhanaWeb.

He decried how Ghanaians are reluctant to help drug addicts recover because they feel such people should have known better before falling prey to drugs.

He lamented that “very few people understand that addiction is a disease. Very few people understand that just as somebody can have malaria, somebody can have diabetes…when you look at the World Health Organisation classification of diseases, addiction is there…A very few people understand that the person who has the disease of addiction is sick and need our support.”

Walter Damien Asooh further mentioned that most government rehab centres have been forced to increase their service charges due to the financial challenges, making them the more expensive than private centres, hence, most addicts are unable to seek help from them.

As the world marks International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking under the theme ‘better knowledge for better care’, Mr Asooh believes it is necessary for government to provide the needed funds for public rehab centres so addicts can have easy access to them.