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withdrawn from his addiction.
He is then discharged
and attends the centre daily where he drinks his methadone in a solution of juice under supervision.
25.
The DPAS pilot scheme operates in north Kowloon and is different in nature to the one of the Medical and Health Department. Only people who have tried and failed in either a Prisons Department or SARDA programme are accepted. Once accepted, a client is physically with- drawn from his addiction in a drug free environment in a hospital, following the same pattern as the Medical and Health Department. Of the 100 clients in the scheme, 50 will be put on straight methadone maintenance while the other 50 (called controls) will be given gradually decreasing doses of methadone until eventually they are drinking pure juice as a placebo. All attend a DPAS centre daily in Tung Tau Resettlement Estate to receive their dosage under supervision and a client does not know whether he is receiving straight methadone main- tenance, or whether he is a control client.
The purpose
of this variation is to establish whether it is possible to wean a person off methadone successfully and thus make him abstinent and drug free.
26.
The original plan was to review both schemes at the end of their three year trial period. But the evidence so far available suggests that a useful pre- liminary evaluation should be possible after one year i.e. in January 1974. It is thus intended to assess then whether methadone maintenance should be accepted as a permanent form of treatment in Hong Kong.
J
Comments.
27.
As was stated in the introductory section of this paper, the work being done to treat drug addiction in Hong Kong is as good as and probably better than any- where else in the world. The fact nevertheless is that this work cannot make any impact on the Colony's problem as a whole: the present throughput, prisons included, is
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