Addicts’ lifeline to go
Every morning, right about 8am, Vuthy* starts to feel out of sorts. On the way from his home in Meanchey district to the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital, where he receives treatment, he breaks into a sweat. … Vuthy is one of about 140 former heroin addicts who make the trek to Khmer-Soviet every day to receive their allotted dose of methadone. For some, it’s a routine they have followed for nearly four years, and for all of them, in theory, it will continue for years to come. However, with new patients declining, monthly drop-outs on the rise and its main donor phasing out funding by the end of the year, the Khmer-Soviet clinic – the only one in the country since 2010 – now finds itself at a crossroads, tasked with finding an “exit plan” that allows it to continue offering services while also trying to expand its reach on an already-tight budget. Dr Chhit Sophal, a psychiatrist with the National Mental Health Program, oversees the program from a second-storey office in the clinic’s squat white building on the Khmer-Soviet campus. The main source of funding, he said, has been the Australian government, but as of December 31, that funding will disappear. … The Australian embassy in Phnom Penh confirmed that the funding would stop at year’s end, and said in an email last week that its aid funds were now being “refocused on reducing poverty in the Indo-Pacific region”, and called the methadone program one of “a range of positive results” to come out of its HIV/AIDS Asia Regional Program. …
Stuart White and Mom Kunthear
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/addicts%E2%80%99-lifeline-go
