Rolled out over a year ago to verify patients’ identities and curb the pilferage of buprenorphine tablets, the biometric attendance system at Outpatient Opioid-Assisted Treatment (OOAT) centres in Punjab is still battling teething problems in the absence of basic technical infrastructure.
Under the programme, biometric machines with fingerprint scanning and cameras were provided for identity verification, backed by a Drug De-addiction Registry Portal to maintain a centralised database for patient records and monitoring medicine distribution. Meanwhile, patients continue to receive buprenorphine on the basis of their Aadhaar cards, without the additional biometric verification mechanism envisaged by the government. At Community Health Centre (CHC) Dhakoli in Mohali, records had flagged discrepancies involving buprenorphine stocks and entries relating to ghost patients, raising questions about the distribution and possible diversion of the medicine.
Buprenorphine is a partial opioid agonist medicine distributed at over 540 OOAT centres to treat opioid dependence among drug addicts by suppressing cravings and preventing withdrawal symptoms. The biometric system, launched in March 2025, was intended to strengthen identity verification and ensure that medicines reached only registered patients by preventing impersonation and fake patient entries. As a result, the biometric devices distributed at the clinics remain unplugged, even rendering the portal developed to record patients’ attendance useless, employees at the OOAT centres said.
