Director General of ICAA discusses local situation with Parliamentary Committee for Social Affairs

The Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Social Affairs, the Hon Dr Alex Sceberras Trigona, had a meeting with Dr Eva Tongue, Director General of the International Council on Alcohol and Addiction and Mr Joe Gerada, Chief Executive of Sedqa. Dr Tongue is in Malta for discussion with Sedqa regarding the international Conference that ICAA will be organising in Malta. Over 500 delegates from 60 different countries are expected to attend. Most of them would be professionals working in the field of addictions and managers of services.

Dr Tongue said that she was very pleased that collaboration with Sedqa led to the decision to have the conference in Malta. She said that the reports from Sedqa show that the services in Malta are not only of a high quality but the variety of services and the way they are integrated are a model to larger countries who may not have reached such a high level of integration. Dr Tongue said that the Maltese Government has invested wisely when setting up community based services which are usually more accessible and client oriented. She emphasised the need for prevention and that school programmes such as those introduced by Sedqa are very valuable and cost effective. However, she said that the breathalyser tests should be introduced because they contribute directly to the reduction of road accidents.

Dr Sceberras Trigona welcomed Dr Tongue and expressed his appreciation to ICAA for choosing Malta to host this prestigious conference. He said that the drug and alcohol problem was a priority for Malta and his committee, and Malta was following a balanced strategy of prevention, treatment and care and law enforcement. Dr Sceberras Trigona said that Malta wanted a system which catered for the different phases of recovery of the addicted person and his or her family. For this reason the strategy was to improve the services which are in direct contact with the family and the addict. Dar Gubbio and Dar Zerniq clearly demonstrate this strategy while with prevention, the current school programme could be extended to cover even kindergarten. He said that few countries have reached this far, and Malta would continue in this direction because it believed that the addiction problem could best be addressed with a long term education and information programme. Dr Sceberras Trigona said that he looked forward to next year's conference and hoped that Sedqa personnel would, through ICAA, support developing countries, particularly those in the Mediterranean Region, to set up and improve on the quality of prevention and treatment services offered to people suffering from drugs, alcohol and other addiction problems.