Rebuke For ‘Unacceptable’ Drug-Treatment Waiting Times

Public Health Minister Shona Robison has rebuked NHS Grampian for its failure to meet targets for drug-treatment waiting times in light of a report showing Aberdeen has one of the highest rates of addiction in the country.

During a visit to a health centre for homeless people in the city yesterday, she said it was “unacceptable” that many drug users were waiting so long for treatment. A report last month by the Social Work Inspection Agency identified lengthy waiting times for treatment and wide variations in the services offered to users.

Waiting lists in Aberdeen were found to be particularly long, inspectors referred to a “bottleneck” of people awaiting treatment, while people in rural areas faced the greatest difficulties accessing services. Ms Robison said: “The health board and the councils are very aware of that report and have already put work in place to address the situation. If there was a magic wand that could be waved, it would have been done already.”

Later, during NHS Grampian’s annual review meeting, she praised the health board for its work in tackling hospital-acquired infections and measures introduced to improve access to dentists across the north-east. She asked what was being done to get drug addicts into treatment as quickly as possible.

NHS Grampian director of public health Dr Leslie Wilkie said the health board welcomed the inspection agency’s report and a meeting had been set up between board members and the heads of Grampian’s alcohol and drug action teams. A temporary drug-treatment and rehabilitation centre has been established at the Denburn Health Centre in Rosemount, she added.

NHS Grampian chairman Jim Royan said there was now a new “element of energy” in the board’s dealing with local authorities to tackle the problem. The inspection agency’s report also found 2.03% of Aberdeen’s population – well above the Scottish average of 1.84% – misuse opiates and benzodiazepine, primarily heroin and tranquillisers.

Aberdeen also had the highest rate of injecting and a higher rate of psychostimulant use – cocaine, crack cocaine and amphetamines. Figures from the Registrar General for Scotland show 421 people died from drugs in 2006, up from 336 the year before. Grampian had the second-highest level of drug deaths in Scotland, representing 11% of the national total. The number of people who died in the region more than doubled to 47, up from 23 in 2005.

The Scottish Government said methadone would continue to be used as a route out of addiction, despite criticism by some drug workers that the heroin substitute simply prolongs dependency.

Community Safety Minister Fergus Ewing said: “Methadone can stabilise lives but must also come with genuine rehabilitation. We need to be more than a prescription service and focus our attention on how best we can move people on from methadone into the healthy and productive family and working lives that most of us take for granted.

“If not on methadone, many former addicts would go back to injecting every vein in their body, turning up at our hospitals with abscesses, aneurysms and HIV and ultimately at much greater risk of death.”