Medical professionals get hooked on narcotics, says Provost

Provost of the Medical School, University of Lagos, Prof. David Oke, has alleged that some surgeons and other medical professionals involved in the surgical operation of patients tend to be addicted to narcotic drugs used as painkillers for patients after surgery.

As such, the Director General, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, reiterated the Agency’s commitment to ensuring the availability of narcotics and controlled substances for medical and scientific purposes while preventing diversion to illicit use in Nigeria.

A statement said the duo made this known at the unveiling of the International Narcotics Control Board annual report availability supplement and precursor report 2023 by NAFDAC in Lagos. Adeyeye admitted that narcotics and psychotropic substances were indispensable in the management of pains and other medical conditions.

She, however, added that NAFDAC would prevent the diversion of such drugs to illicit use in Nigeria.

The NAFDAC boss who was represented by the Director, Laboratory Services (Food), Dr Charles Nwachukwu, however, stressed that competent national authorities must scale up their activities, and monitor online advertisement and sales of controlled substances to stay ahead of traffickers.

According to her, the report analyses the global availability of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances for medical and scientific purposes. It highlights the persistent disparities in access to medicines for the treatment of pain.  The precursors report x-rays issues related to trafficking in synthetic drugs including non-medical synthetic opioids, cocaine, and their precursors which represent a growing threat to public health.

Furthermore, Oke, underscored the aptness of the occasion, given the fact that in clinical practices, several drugs and derivatives of narcotics, particularly opium and their derivatives were used in pain management, most especially in some critical conditions that involved excruciating pains.

Oke, who was represented by Prof Olatunji Aina, a professor of Psychiatry at the College of Medicine disclosed that not only the members of the public indulge in abuse of medical narcotics. He lamented that doctors and other professionals who have these drugs in custody at the hospitals over time tend to be addicted to the drugs they administer to the patients.

‘’Even amongst our colleagues in the health practice, especially those that work in the theatre including professionals that are directly in charge of these drugs, some of them over time tend to be addicted to the drugs,” he said.

He described it as a big public health problem that only a collaboration between NAFDAC and NDLEA could nip in the bud.

He explained that some medical conditions like sickle cell disease crisis, orthopedic cases, particularly fracture cases, and the management of cancer, would warrant giving some of these narcotics to the patients to relieve them of severe pain.

According to him, the dilemma of the physician is when the patient now becomes addicted, stressing that it is very important to know at what point a patient no longer requires analgesics and has become addicted.

In some cases, he said, sometimes when you think the clinical situation has improved and would not warrant the demand for analgesics, such patients still demanded the drugs.

 “I’m very happy about the control of these medicines by NAFDAC because it’s one of the commonest problems we have in psychiatry, particularly patients that are addicted to the controlled medicines and injections,’’ he said.