Heroin ambulance in Berlin-Kreuzberg is about to end – BZ Berlin
The lease of the drug emergency service expires in December and there are no new rooms. The care of 350 patients is at risk!
A dreary gray entrance behind Checkpoint Charlie. A narrow staircase leads to the first floor of the heroin clinic. The drug emergency service has been based here for 20 years, supplying 350 ex-junkies with medication so that they are no longer dependent on street heroin.
But her lease expires in December and there are no new rooms. The ambulance is about to close!
Your work is important. Because anyone who climbs the narrow steps on Kochstrasse is one of the most needy in our society. All patients have been addicted to drugs for a long time and are looking for a second chance in life.
Help is available in the form of a small tablet – methadone or Subutex as a substitute for heroin and against drug addiction. And above all, there is someone here who listens. In total there will be around 6000 people with occupations in Berlin.
Tom Z. (56) has been coming here once a week for 17 years. Before that, he was on heroin for four years and relapsed again years later. He was later in jail for referring others to his dealer. “For that I got something for free.”
Doctors and therapists saved his life here. “I was folded more and more thinly, but I didn’t even notice what was going on”, he remembers, “at some point I’ll be together.”
He came from the ambulance to the intensive care unit for several weeks. He’s been out for a week. “If the ambulance no longer exists, I don’t know what to do,” he says. Because there are few practices that patients like him take.
“The city needs the ambulance,” says doctor Anika Willoh (49). “Our patients need our help. We save lives and make sure that people do not become drug addicts again or end up on the streets. “
But nobody believes that the drug emergency service can stay in the rooms. The landlord is, of all things, the also charitable Malteser Foundation. Was this with the rooms in the system is not known.
“That’s why we turned to the Senate early on,” says Michael Frommhold (51), “but received no answer for months.” Health Senator Dilek Kalayci (SPD) does not respond.
“In the meantime, Social Senator Elke Breitenbach has promised us support,” says the managing director of the outpatient clinic, “but time is short.”