Patiala, May 17 -- With the number of patients visiting government-run Outpatient Opioid Assisted Treatment (OOAT) clinics seeing a rise amid the Punjab government's anti-drug campaign, a shortage of psychiatrists and counsellors is proving to be a handicap. There are only 45 psychiatrists for 542 OOAT clinics across the state, and many districts lack even a single psychiatrist. Similarly, with just 216 counsellors across the state, many clinics do not have a single counsellor, despite the health department's norm of two counsellors per clinic with a daily OPD count over 100. Psychiatrists play a crucial role in monitoring the dosage of recovering drug addicts, conducting inspections of OOAT clinics, and approving the enrolment of new patients into the programme. As per information, drug addicts visiting OOAT clinics had seen a two-fold rise since the state government launched the 'Yudh Nashian Virudh' (War against Drugs) campaign in the last week of February this year. While 816 patients had registered in the month of February, it went up to 1, 391 in March, and 1, 168 in April, as per the data accessed by HT. As per officials, the numbers could have been higher if there were enough psychiatrists, who give the final approval to enrol new patients into the programme. Parminder Singh, state president, Government De-Addiction and Rehabilitation Employees Union, Punjab, said, "The anti-drug drive will not be successful unless the manpower requirement at OOAT centres is met. Without adequate psychiatrists and counsellors, treatment of drug addicts is severely affected." A senior official said that the government had already initiated the process to hire 343 clinical psychologists (counsellors) while efforts are on to hire psychiatrists. "The government is very serious about hiring the required manpower to fulfil the vacancies. We have a shortage of psychiatrists, but we will soon hire a psychiatrist too."...