PROFESSIONALISING SUBSTANCE USE TREATMENT PIVOTAL

A colleague recently shared an article by the Global Press Journal which painted a gloomy picture of the lack of accessibility to services for most of the Ugandans dealing with addiction problems. The article authored by Edna Namara, highlights that Uganda has a population of close to 43 million people yet there are only ten registered drug rehabilitation centres.

The Ugandan situation is a stark reality of the African situation as regards accessibility to addiction services. Many people do not have access to addiction for many reasons ranging from being reluctant to seek help, cultural beliefs on seeking treatment and lack of trained addiction professionals.

A 2010 study by Myers and others established that people in Cape Town underutilised substance use treatment facilities. Furthermore, another study Myers in 2012 did highlight that whilst there are efforts to improve accessibility of services for substance use treatment, the quality of the services leaves a lot to be desired. The quality of services may be attributed to lack of skilled personnel in the mental health addiction field. Accessibility of services is fundamental in dealing with drug demand reduction thus the need to enhance it by training of addiction professionals. Seeking substance use treatment should be the ideal undertaking and should not bring harmful consequences thus the need to task relevant professionals with the task. As highlighted in the third plenary session of the ongoing ISSUP virtual conference, George Murimi of the Drug Advisory Programme indicated that efforts are well underway to train addiction professionals across the African continent. The professionals are given credentials and certification by the Global Centre for Credentialing and Certification (GCCE) following successful completion of the assessment processes.

It is worth noting that Botswana has immensely benefitted from the professionalisation of the addiction field, with most credentialled at ICAP 1 and others at ICAP II and ICAP III; which is quite significant. In the midst of the added complexity of addiction brought about by COVID-19, lets utilise these professionals whom are in most health centres across the country. Substance use disorders are just like other diseases that require treatment and implore people to seek help.