The Bulgarian Ministry of Health is on the verge of shutting down the National Centre for Addictions

The Minister of Health doctor Tanya Andreeva has sent a report to the Government with a proposition to close the Centre. It was published on the website of the Ministry of Health on 9 July.

The activities of the Centre will be executed by another healthcare structure if the proposition is passed.

What makes such an “optimizing” and restructuring of the healthcare system necessary is not made clear.

In Bulgaria, no special attention and care are paid to the thousands of people dependent on drugs. However, the National Centre for Addictions is a well-functioning structure that aims to ease their problems at least a little.

Because of this, its closure and the redirection of its resources to another, much bigger and non-specific structure, does not look very promising.

We can only hope that the Government will not choose to take several steps back in the domain of the treatment and rehabilitation of its dependent citizens. We have been expecting it to do just the opposite - to take steps forward.

In addition, all organizations in Bulgaria working in the field of dependencies have no more than two weeks to react and express their opinion.

A few days ago (18 July 2014), many non-governmental organizations expressed their categorical disagreement with the proposition and sent an open letter to the Minister of Health. They state that the Centre is the only genuinely functioning structure that actively carries out the national policy concerning the prevention, harm-reduction, treatment and rehabilitation associated with the use of drugs. According to them if the Centre is closed, it would be impossible to carry out the country’s policy aimed at reducing the illicit drug demand on the black market. This is unacceptable for a country member of the European Union.  They also say that they see the proposition as a lack of interest in the problems of drug use and drug dependencies on behalf of the Government and that this recent proposition is not the only evidence pointing to that conclusion. The organizations point out that there are no argument what so ever in the report that support the proposition.

As the Government resigned on 23 July after more than a year of protests against it, it is not clear what will happen to the targeted Centre.