MUDr.Ľubomír Okruhlica, CSc.,
director

He was born in Bratislava on 1st January 1952. He graduated from the Medical faculty UK in Bratislava in 1976. After conclusion of higher education he worked as a specialised assistant to the Psychiatry department of the Medical faculty UK in Bratislava. In 1980, he passed the 1st grade specialist diploma in psychiatry and the 2nd grade in 1985. He gained the title of candidate of science in the field of medicine, psychiatry section in 1988. From 1989 – 1991, he worked on the framework of the technical assistance to developing countries as the psychiatrist-consultant for the Ministry of Health in Zambia. From 1992 – 1993, he was assigned to lead the Psychiatry department of the Medical faculty of the University in Lusaka, Zambia. At the same time, he was also the volunteer-specialist of the United Nations Organisation in this country. He proposed and implemented a project to introduce MKCH-10/SZO under African conditions. Between1994 and 1995, he performed the function of deputy director of the Centre for Treatment of Drug Dependencies (CPLDZ – Centrum pre liečbu drogových závislostí), Bratislava. He is a graduate of the study within the framework of Hubert H.Humphrey´s grant at the School of Hygiene and Public Health Service of Hopkinson University in Baltimore, USA, in the academic year of 1995 – 1996.

Since 1996, he has been the director of the Centre for Treatment of Drug Dependencies in Bratislava and since 1997 he has been the Principal specialist at the Department of drug addiction at the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic. He took part in the rebuilding of the centre to the multi-modal centre for the treatment of addiction. Based on his initiative, a specialised bed detoxification unit with a programme for the addicts on opiates, a programme of substitution treatment with ethyl-morphine and codeine, a programme of sustaining treatment with methadone was created and the Institute for Drug Dependencies was established as well as the toxicological laboratory within the framework of the Centre for Treatment of Drug Dependencies.

He founded the DROG-STOP Foundation and he is a board member of the Federation of Therapeutic Communities of Middle and Eastern Europe as well as an active participant in several internal and foreign projects of professional co-operation.