UpbeatIndia to train 10,000 health workers to treat addiction as medicine, not punishment
At Kartavya Bhawan in New Delhi on Monday, Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda launched a nationwide training programme with a clear philosophy: addiction is a health condition, and the people who treat it should be trained like it. The Capacity Building Training Programme aims to train 10,000 frontline health workers by March 2029 — 2,000 in the first year, then 3,000, then 5,000 — coordinated by the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre at AIIMS New Delhi with NIMHANS Bengaluru, PGIMER Chandigarh, the Central Institute of Psychiatry in Ranchi, RML Hospital and AIIMS Bhubaneswar. More than 800 nominations have already arrived, and the launch released the second edition of the programme's manual for physicians. The need is vast — the ministry cites some 160 million alcohol users in India and fewer than one in four people with dependence previously reaching structured care — which is exactly why the training is aimed at the frontline, where most patients first appear.
SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: institutional program