KARACHI - Unawareness among women in using tranquillisers to cure diseases can lead them into addiction of the same and this trend is on the rise in City, The Nation learnt Saturday. Spokeswoman of the New Horizon Care Centre (NHCC), an NGO, which provides free drugs treatment and rehabilitation to the drug addicts for the past several years, apprised the scribe of the phenomenon. She said that NHCC provided an opportunity to the affected women to rehabilitate and in this regard the management of NHCC had established a women treatment and rehabilitation centre at Gulshan-e-Iqbal, 13-D-2, Waseem Bagh. Farheen Siddiqui, who is also the in-charge of women centre, said that hundreds of women mostly belonging to the middle-class found involved in using tranquillisers. She said the women in question had never had a history of being vulnerable to any addiction and they simply became become addicts as they got used to taking tranquillisers during the treatment of their ailments including pregnancy. "When the centre was established dozens of cases came into the knowledge of the administration that several women are taking various types of tranquillisers as an addiction", she said. Farheen said that these women were destroying their lives by regularly using tranquillisers through syringes and some of them had so much addicted that they used 4 to 5 syringes at a time. The staffers and volunteers of NHCC disclosed that the wholesale market of medicines in Juria Bazar had virtually become a paradise for the women who used tranquillisers and they are the regular buyers. In experts' opinion continuous use of any tranquillisers without any doctor's prescription is called drugs addiction. A fellow who works in the wholesale market of Juria Bazar told this scribe that 50 to 100 women, most of them belonging to the middle class including working women would go there daily to purchase syringes of tranquillisers and pills. He said that this practice had been continuing for the past many years and he himself was surprised that no body took notice of the wrongdoing which was perilous to the lives of women. Selling tranquilliser as part of addiction business has converted into a separate lucrative business in the wholesale market of medicines and a narrow lane in the market called 'Katchi Galli' is notorious in this regard, from where these women could purchase such type of medicines. "Not a single government agency, neither excise police nor health ministry has ever taken notice of this wrongdoing which has been continued for the past many years," he said. He mentioned that more than 50 women visited daily here from 11am to 2pm. They buy medicines and syringes for their addiction. These medicines are Valium, Diazepem, Laxotainel, Xanax, Ativan, Pentozon and women use them without doctor's any prescription. "Women, in order to conceal their addiction, buy those tranquillisers from Joria Bazar despite their availability on several medical stores of their localities", sources said. Some eyewitnesses in the whole sale market said that they knew some of the women who had been using injections for the past several years. They further disclosed that some of the shopkeepers of medical stores in the market cheated on the women by providing distilled water in the injections in disguise of tranquilliser. The Co-ordinator of NHCC Naveed Younus, who is the first person in the country who established NHCC and start free treatment and rehabilitation to the drug addicts, said that in most of the cases women used these tranquillisers to cure any disease. "But during this process they used to take these tranquillisers and gradually plunged into the addiction," he added. He said that a number of families and relatives of affected women had contacted NHCC but they were unable to provide treatment due to the absence of the rehabilitation and treatment centre for women. "Therefore, for providing proper treatment, a centre has to be established for them where they are being treated and many cases have been reported after its establishment," he said.