A report by Nation Newsplex on Tuesday highlighted that there is a rising number of Kenyans addicted to prescription drugs constituted with opioids.
The report outlines that one in every eight people addicted to prescription medicine in Africa lives in East Africa.
The four types of drugs that were highlighted to be causing high dependency are codeine (contained in cough syrups), tramadol which is a prescription painkiller, pethidine and morphine that are used mainly on patients undergoing surgery.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2018 report, the addiction is prevalent among professionals such as pilots, teachers, law enforcers, lawyers and other professionals as well as doctors and nurses themselves.
[caption caption="Two drug-dependent individuals share injection "]
[/caption]
"Since they (health professionals) are allowed by law to keep these drugs, one will never tell whether they will use it on the patient or not. After all, the law already allows them to have custody of the products," a pharmaceutical expert conveyed.
The worst affected addicts are Kenyan youth aged between 22 and 35 years mostly found in Mandera, Mombasa and Nairobi counties.
A recent survey by the Kenya Pharmacy and Poisons Board showed a spike in the number of bottles sold of Benylin cough syrup which contains codeine at about 437,399.
Other variants of the same cough syrup that did not contain the addictive substance recorded less than a quarter of that number at 86,183 bottles sold between January and November 2017.
"Addiction to painkillers often starts with pain management. A doctor prescribes codeine to manage a patient’s pain for a number of days. Later, the patient is gobbling up the pills to get high," explained Dr Peter Njagi, a psychiatrist and addiction specialist.
The experts further advise that medicating clinical symptoms of fatigue, stress and depression have exacerbated the addiction problem.
[caption caption="A patient holds up a number of drugs issued to manage a terminal illness"]
[/caption]
