Health Minister Adel Adawy has ordered 12 private drug rehabilitation centres in the Cairo and Giza governorates to be closed down, after they were found to be operating without a license.

According to health ministry spokesman Hossam Abdel-Ghaffar, there are 36 certified rehabilitation centres in the Cairo and Giza governorates.

Abdel-Ghaffar told Ahram Online that their initiative to shut down illegal medical and rehabilitation centres has been ongoing for the past two months.

The exact number of patients who have been treated by the unlicensed centres is however "unclear," Abdel-Ghaffar said.

The health minister has also decided to file a police report against the managers of all the closed down medical facilities, in an effort to hold them accountable for having operated in non-conforming conditions, the Ahram Arabic news website has reported.

Adawy has also urged doctors working in psychiatric hospitals to avoid working in unlicensed addiction treatment centres and to uphold their ethical standards.

Drug use among people over 15 has jumped from 6.4 to 30 percent since 2011, according to reports from Egypt’s National Council for Battling Addiction.

On Tuesday, Minister of Social Solidarity Ghada Waly launched the 16023 hotline in a bid to receive reports on the whereabouts of drug trafficking and drug abuse, as well as unlicensed rehabilitation centers.

In 2013, staff members at a private drug rehabilitation centre in Cairo's Muqattam district were found to have tortured their patients, according to the preliminary findings of an investigation by prosecutors.