By Yannick Rivet
Published 09/4/2009
A survey conducted by the international data collection firm Socrata on National Alcohol Consumption around the world and published earlier this year, confirmed existing local facts: Mauritians consume more than 3,600,000 litres of alcohol in a year.
While the mental hospital and rehabilitation centres are getting over-crowded, statistics reveal another problem: Mauritian alcohol consumers are starting at a younger age.
The International Commission for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (ICPA) proposes to set up a national chapter to help in the fight against this social scourge.
Authorities, such as the NATReSA and NGOs have rung the alarm pertaining to the current alcohol addiction situation for several years now and while actions are being taken to rehabilitate a growing number of alcohol addicts, prevention remains the best option if a solution is to be found.
“Working with young people has been a very important aspect of our work of prevention and the key to effective prevention is to establish their ability to be resilient particularly when under peer pressure. They need to be able to say “No” to at-risk behaviours,” said Dr Peter Landless, Executive Director of the ICPA. He was recently on a visit to Mauritius with a team of collaborators to discuss the possibility of setting up a national chapter of the ICPA in Mauritius.
“Developing such resilience will only be possible by fostering and building relationships through role models, meaningful interactions of young people with significant others. I was recently at a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) meeting in Vienna and one of the main issues that was raised by the participants was the importance of service and connectedness to promote resilience among the youth. The UNODC is indeed very much involved in the same strategy as the ICPA, emphasizing the importance of service, mentoring in prevention,” Dr Landless said.
However, the need for a national coherent and multilateral strategy which will include all partners of civil society and NGOs is essential if a long term solution is to be found to this problem.
In order to identify the possibility of partnership between the Mauritian Government and the ICPA, a series of meetings were scheduled with the Ministers of Education, Women and Health.
“Our objective is to set up a national chapter of the ICPA in Mauritius. With the help of the Seventh Day Adventist Church infrastructures and resources, the local chapter will conduct awareness campaigns, and social actions all over the island to sensitize the population at large to alcohol issues,” said Sanjay Bundhoo, Director of the local Seventh Day Adventist Health Department.
The programmes and activities will aim at sensitizing all communities and religions.
Concerted effort
“We are aware that faith-based groups have a strong potential to sensitize people. Conscious of this fact, the ICPA strongly exhorts all faith groups to take the lead and use their weekly platforms whether on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays to deliver a message of prevention to their congregations. This concept was indeed implemented by the former President of the United States, George W Bush who engaged faith based groups along with NGOs to implement preventive measures.
The programme is to galvanize all churches irrespective of their faith and we aim at promoting churches to become places where health seminars are conducted, community health centres, and where the community’s problems are identified and solutions proposed. The whole idea is to try and make a difference in society,” Dr Landless added.
The setting up of a National Committee for Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (NCPA) will also be project driven and will be helped by the ICPA staff.
“We will help in the training of local volunteers and hopefully organize conferences as we have done in the past on a regional and international scales. The objective is to highlight the cutting edge approaches to alcohol and drug prevention,” said Dr Landless.
The ICPA will provide seed money to the local chapters but it will then be the responsibility of local churches and administration to fund their projects. Moreover, we are willing to bring in expertise from our resources.
We have access to educational expertise. For instance, we have just established a module for educating medical students to prepare them to approach substance abuse patients and addictions. We can thus arrange that one of our representatives comes to conduct the course in Mauritius. We are also very keen on running seminars and symposia bringing in the experts on issues related to the local needs.