In the FY 2014-15, four centres began functioning under the scheme as DTCs, namely, Department of Psychiatry, King Edward Medical College (Mumbai); Department of Psychiatry, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (Imphal); Civil hospital, Bhatinda and Civil Hospital, Kapurthala. Each centre was provided funds for refurbishment, medicines and staff (medical officer, counselor and nurse). Moreover, recording formats were provided to the centres

As per the capacity building component of this scheme, a five-day event (a four-day training programme followed by one day workshop) was organized by NDDTC, AIIMS from 4th-8th May 2015. The purpose of the training was to train the newly inducted staffs of the DTCs on various aspects of substance use disorder and orient them to their own expected terms of reference, under this scheme. Ten participants, comprising of medical officers, nurses, and counsellors from all the four DTCs participated and underwent training. A meeting and workshop was also conducted under the chairmanship of Professor SK Khandelwal, Chief, NDDTC and was attended by all the team-members looking after this scheme at NDDTC, the participants of the training, and the nodal officers from the four DTCs. The primary objective of the workshop/meeting was to discuss the operational, logistics and administrative issues with regard to the functioning of the DTCs and plans for trouble-shooting.

The DTCs became functional from November 2014 and in the next six months, about 1000 new patients were registered in all the DTCs together. The centres catered to various drugs of use like, alcohol, cannabis, opioids and inhalants. Apart from the detoxification, the patients were also offered free OST medicines as well as psychosocial counseling sessions.

In the FY 2015-16, two centres were identified and approved to become “Regional Resource and Coordinating Centres”, namely, KEM hospital (Mumbai) and RIMS (hospital), which further identified three more DTCs respectively in their regions. Four centres were also approved by NDDTC in the northern region to act as DTCs including one catering to homeless population. Thus, at end of FY 2015-16, the total number of DTCs rose to 14