Mumbai: Even as the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee, today presented Pune-based Dr Anil Awachat in Delhi the national award for outstanding individual achievement in prevention of alcoholism and substance abuse, his daughter went on tirelessly with the family’s mission back home.

A mission to provide treatment, support, counselling and rehabilitation for patients and also create awareness against any kind of addiction is challenging enough especially at a time when more and more youngsters and even women are being drawn to it. June 26 has been declared as International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking and at the Muktangan Rehabilitation Centre (MRC) run by Awachat, it’s been yet another day committed to training volunteers with the Narcotics Control Bureau who can talk to the youth to keep away from drugs and alcohol.

“The award given to my father is an honour for the entire Muktangan family,” Mukta Puntambekar, Project Director of Muktangan De-addiction Centre, Pune, told Gulf News.

A pioneer in the field of treating addiction, Awachat and his late wife Anita, also a doctor, founded the MRC in August 1986. Since then it has grown from strength to strength under the leadership of the Awachat couple who have treated over 20,000 patients. Anita’s untimely death due to cancer was a tremendous blow to Awachat but being a pragmatic person, he never slowed down and also wrote several books, including ‘Gard’, a research-based book on addiction of brown sugar.

MRC is also the first in India to set up a separate section for female patients that is run by only women. “Only 15 patients could be accommodated when my parents started this rehabilitation centre but now we have a 150-bed centre with many patients on the waiting list. They come from all parts of the country, including Indians living abroad.”

Today, under his guidance, Awachat’s daughter Mukta, has steered the organisation with new techniques, strategies and introduced modern and innovative methods acknowledged by the government, NGOs and private sector in India and abroad. That is because there is a whole new scenario out there with the addicts as young as 13 or 14 years, she says. “Many are into inhaling glue, petrol or other substances which we think is very serious since the fumes go directly to the brain and can make them unconscious and even cause death.”

She also blames the party culture in Pune and in other cities being the cause of addiction as it has become fashionable to smoke and drink. Street children, school and college students, foreign students, the booming IT industry with young employees, many with plenty of money to spend and under no parental control, are succumbing to this evil, she says. The education department should have lessons on addiction in school text books from eight standard onwards. “It needs a concerted effort, both from the government and society, to curb addiction on a war footing.”