MAN PITCHES CENTRE FOR TREATING ADDICTIONS

He Wants To Help People With Addictions Get Their Lives Back On Track.

So Rock Chalifour, a Port Coquitlam man who works as a nurse at Royal
Columbian Hospital, is lobbying local municipal councils for their support
in his drive to set up a hospital-based addictions treatment program within
the Simon Fraser Health Region.

Chalifour, who will be making a presentation tonight before Maple Ridge
council, said he wants "some place to send people when they come to
emergency so they don't just get sent back out to the street...There's no
such hospital in this province."

He said he works in the RCH emergency department and is "frustrated with
the fact that I have these people who come in and seek help but there's no
place to send them. If they go to a detox centre, they can only handle the
detox issues there, not the psychoses or medical problems. In a hospital,
they can handles psychoses, seizures or other medical problems, but not
addictions."

Chalifour said he's been working on his project for three years now, and
has liaised with a group of people who advise him from time to time. "We
loosely call ourselves the Addictions Treatment Advocacy," he said.

What he and the group envision is a treatment facility with 50 beds
dedicated to people with addictions that would be located either within an
existing hospital or, down the road, a stand-alone facility.

It would be staffed by doctors who specialize in addictions treatment and
ideally financed by Health Canada. Additional funding might also be applied
for from the provincial Ministry of the Attorney General or the Ministry of
Children and Family Development.

"We're not looking at the Ministry of Health for funding. Private funding
is not outside the realm of possibility because currently most health care
recovery programs beyond detox are, in fact, managed in the private
sector," Chalifour said.

He intends to make presentations to all of the municipal councils within
the SFHR. To date, he's received letters of support from councils in New
Westminster and Port Coquitlam, and is waiting to receive a letter from
Coquitlam council.

Besides funding, Chalifour said he also wants to focus on under serviced
groups with addictions, namely the working poor. He noted such people often
don't qualify for treatment in many facilities because they're either
making too much money to go on welfare, which would cover such treatment,
or they don't receive extended medical benefits for addiction treatment at
their places of employment.

What could cover that group of people, and others, would be a hospital
modelled after the Homewood treatment hospital in Guelph, Ont., which he
said specializes in addictions treatment and psychiatry. Chalifour said he
believes Homewood's treatment can be covered by provincial health care.

"There's no question that the federal government is looking to generate an
organized strategy on drug treatment at the national level," he said. "So
we have to look at Homewood, a holistic program that looks at the medical,
the psychiatric, the psychological and the social wellbeing of the patient,
and reintegrating them into society with a full set of skills to live as a
sober person."

In the meantime, he plans to continue lobbying local governments for their
support.

"I've had excellent support so far," Chalifour said. "Maybe it's just good
timing, but I believe society is ready to look at addictions as a disease
not as a social problem."