Race against time for the Vietnamese authorities.
They are searching for around 100 patients who escaped from an overcrowded public drug treatment center in the Mekong Delta town of Soc Trang, state media said Monday.
In total, following an “internal dispute” that occurred during the night from Saturday to Sunday, 191 drug addicts escaped from the center, reported the official police newspaper, Cong An Nhan Dan.
As of Monday morning, 94 of them had already been found and brought back to the center, but police and families were still looking for around a hundred people, according to this newspaper.
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According to this same source, the patients broke down the doors of their dormitory and escaped both through the main entrance and by jumping over fences.
Some escaped through a hole they had drilled in one of the centre's walls.
Several security guards were injured after being attacked by the fugitives, the report said.
The center also had poor infrastructure, local officials said, and was overcrowded, with sixty guards for 460 patients, most of them men.
Overcrowded centers
Vietnam has more than 30,000 drug addicts monitored in state facilities, some of whom are forced by law to spend up to two years in closed ward.
Most detained patients experience abrupt withdrawal in these overcrowded centers, or are placed in solitary confinement for breaking the rules.
Vietnam is experimenting with more options for treating addictions, but these detoxification centers remain the most common option.
They are widely endorsed by the government and the public as a viable treatment option, but addiction specialists say they do not work and relapse rates are high.
This is not the first time a mass elopement has occurred.
In 2018, around 200 drug addicts escaped from a drug treatment center in the southern province of Tien Giang.
A year earlier, 100 people escaped from a center in the neighboring province of Long An because they were unhappy at spending the Tet holiday away from their families.