HOSPITAL TAKES ON ADDICTS' HABITS

SHANGHAI: The first four drug addicts stepped into the city's only privately
run drug rehabilitation hospital, the Shanghai Huashi Drug Recovery
Hospital, yesterday afternoon.

The step is the first of many to try and shake their addiction and a stride
forward for the local social groups trying to rehabilitate them and other
users.

Huashi Hospital, jointly backed by Shanghai Yishida Investment Ltd and the
Shanghai Huashan Health Development Co, is able to cater for about 80
patients at the moment and it has the goal of becoming China's leading
non-government drug recovery centre.

The city only has one voluntary drug recovery centre under the
government-run Shanghai Mental Health Centre, which has about 40 beds.

In addition, the city's detox institute, where people are forced to undergo
rehabilitation after being caught by police with drugs - which is under the
Shanghai Public Security Bureau - has about 1,000 beds. They are for
short-term abstinence of three to six months.

If people who have been to the institute are caught using drugs again, they
are sent to another facility. They may have to stay there for up to three
years.

Dai Lili, the director of the hospital, said: "Our hospital will protect
patients' privacy."

Besides the widely accepted methadone treatment, Chinese traditional
medicines and psychotherapy will be introduced to assist patients.

Shanghai's first private facility, the Daying Drug Recovery Hospital,
opening in October 2001 and was forced to close last year as it could not
get enough funding.

The number of addicts in the city has been rapidly increasing in recent
years with the proportion of young drug-takers growing the fastest.

"In Shanghai, about 17,000 people are reportedly drug addicts," said
professor Guo Lianfang, an authority in the field.

Statistics show most of the addicts are between the ages of 17 and 35. The
unemployed account for over 80 per cent of the total.

At the detox institute, drug users under the age of 18 account for 2.8 per
cent of the total.

"Young people between the ages of 18 to 25 account for 36.4 per cent," said
Huang Shunmei, who is in charge of the institute.