The National Authority for the Campaign against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) is advocating for creative and inexpensive ways to treat drug addiction in the country.
The authority has acknowledged that normal rehabilitation treatment for addiction is very expensive.
The Acting CEO John Muteti further said the country faces a shortage of rehabilitation centres with the majority of those existing being privately owned.
“We must come up with creative and innovative ways of treating these sick people who are addicted by making sure that we have treatment regimens or treatment approaches which are cheap and effective,” Muteti said.
Currently, the country is running Medically Assisted Therapy (MAT) clinics targeting people who inject drugs.
The medically assisted therapy is given daily, thus posing a challenge since some of those recruited into the programme tend to drop out.
The methadone being used in the country is liquid and currently funded 100 per cent by the Kenyan government.
Syringes are bought by Global Fund and distributed by the Kenya Red Cross.
“One of those ways is to have a community home based treatment regime where the people are treated within their community because that way, the relapse rates are low and you can monitor the progress,” Muteti said.
“This is because if you have a community-based treatment approach then that means that the people are watching you every day, you are still being treated within your environment and the treatment may not be very expensive.”
As of June last year, data from the National AIDs and STI’s Control Programme showed that close to 10,000 patients had been recruited into the programme with just 8,000 who were active after some either dropped out or completed the dose and were no longer using drugs.
Kenya started the MAT programme in 2014 to look at how to manage the large number of people who inject drugs in the country.
