The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a report that drugs like Vicodin, oxycodone and methadone are to blame for 14 800 fatal overdoses in 2008 – more than triple the 4000 who died of painkiller overdose in 1999.
This rate has increased almost in line with the pace of sales killers in pharmacies, hospitals and doctors’ offices, which has quadrupled over the past decade. The rate of prescription painkiller sales in 2010 reached 7.1 kg per 10,000 people, which, according to the CDC was enough “to care for all American adults around-the-clock for a month.”
“Although most of these pills were prescribed for medical purposes, many ended up in the hands of people who have abused or mistreated them,” he added.Last year, 12 million Americans reported having taken prescription painkillers for non-medical or recreational purposes.
The death rate pain and sales vary widely by state. Notorious “pill mills” have been at the epicenter of Florida in sales of prescription drugs to the United States and sales per person in the state were more than three times higher than in Illinois, which has the highest the lowest.
Meanwhile, rates of overdose deaths ranged from 5.5 per 100,000 people in Nebraska and 27 in New Mexico, CDC.
Among key demographic subgroups, the CDC found that many men than women died from an overdose Of prescription painkillers, middle-aged adults the highest overdose, and people in rural counties were about two times more likely to overdose than urban dwellers.
To fight against the increasing abuse of drugs, the CDC urged health care providers to prescribe painkillers to “carefully selected patients and monitored” when alternative treatments have not been sufficient to treat pain.
Health officials also recommended that States take action against the factories using the pill and prescription drugs and monitoring of claims files of information to identify and address inappropriate prescribing and use by patients.
No comments:
Post a Comment