In a letter to Zulu, Cedars attorney Bianca Larratt said Cedars admits and treats between 350 and 400 patients a year.
The regulation change by social development minister Lindiwe Zulu, gazetted on Tuesday, followed a threat of legal action by at least one centre, The Cedars, a private facility in Scottburgh, KwaZulu-Natal, which argued that the ban on new patients, other than through a court order, was a direct contradiction of disaster regulations allowing people to access medical attention.
“At the time of the lockdown, five patients were admitted. Since the lockdown, it has received about three inquiries per day from people suffering from drug and alcohol dependence, some of them chronic cases,” she said. Larratt said the lockdown was affecting addicts who could no longer get their “drug of choice”, including alcohol, which could result in an increase in social problems and crime.
“Those chronically addicted to street drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine require medical supervision to detox. Going ‘cold turkey’ can be fatal. A chronic heroin addict, for example, whose body is reliant on four to five hits a day, if suddenly cut off from the drug can experience cardiac arrest and seizures.”
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