EHB METHADONE PROGRAMME

Sir, - Catherine Cleary's informative article (The Irish Times,
February 16th) on the new Methadone Protocol Programme introduced by
the Eastern Health Board on October 1st last indicated:

1. That at least 455 known patients with addiction problems in the EHB
region are currently waiting for access to treatment programmes - 70
more than in 1997.

2. That each of the persons she interviewed had either been shut off
from or denied access to the new programme or to care from their own
personal doctor.

This would appear to be in direct conflict with Article 40.3.1s and 2s
of the Irish Constitution which guarantees in its laws to respect,
defend and vindicate the personal rights of the citizens.

Included in these rights of the citizens is the right to privacy. An
essential aspect of this is the right of access to and treatment from
one's personal physician. Since October 1st, 1998 the EHB has made an
arbitrary and unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of the
relationship between patient and doctor, which in most cases is the
best forum in which to treat and cure a difficult addiction problem.
By denying doctors who have had many years' experience of treating
drug addiction the right to prescribe Methadone for their patients in
the treatment process and also by adopting a heavy-handed and
disruptive attitude toward the many addiction patients struggling to
hold on to their valuable employment by insisting that they present
themselves at clinics every day on pain of being excluded from
treatment, the EHB is guilty of a very serious invasion of the privacy
of the citizen for which in most cases there is no logical
justification.

Ms Cleary's article highlighted the many harmful effects of excluding
patients from treatment. In many cases this includes a return to
heroin addiction that might not have occurred but for the oppressive
action of the EHB. The catastrophic consequences of this in terms of
destruction of the personal dignity of addicts and the increase in
crime and suicide rates that follow are only too well known to
professionals involved in trying to alleviate one of the country's
major problems.

The EHB needs to be called to account for what it has done before the
effects of the protocol's casualties mount to a level that public
opinion will find simply unacceptable. - Yours, etc., JOHN BRADY, SJ,
Milltown Park, Dublin 6