SAHPRA develops plans to address codeine abuse

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The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) says it is developing a plan to force pharmacies and other bodies that dispense medicine to digitally record the identity numbers of people who have been given medications, that include codeine which is used as pain relief medicines and cough mixtures.

The plan comes in response to high levels of codeine abuse particularly amongst the youth as they use it to get high.

SAHPRA Inspectorate and Regulatory Compliance Manager, Mokgadi Fafudi says, “We had to as stakeholders meet in the industry to see where are the loopholes, why are these going into the enlisted market, why are supplies issued incorrectly when there are laws, when there are professionals to safeguard this.”

“But still, we are seeing this problem and this is also going through our bodies. We need a centralised database where we will be collecting data. So that we can prevent, we can detect and respond immediately when we detect that there is a misuse, overuse and abuse,” adds Fafudi.

Below is the full interview