Ministry of Health Outlines Dangers of Drug Use As UN Celebrates January

The United Nations is celebrating January as the Drug Awareness Month, and this includes the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. The theme chosen for this year’s awareness is “Health for Justice, Justice for Health”. The focus for this year entails the whole gamut of human health, human rights, criminal justice, and institutions for social services.

Dominica is not behind in the global celebrations. The Drug Prevention Unit of the Ministry of Health reveals that drug abuse and drug trafficking pose a serious danger to individual families and the country as a whole. The Dominican government agrees with Ghada Fathi Waly, executive director at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) that over one million people die prematurely due to drug abuse and trafficking every year.

A significant percentage of people who are admitted to the Accident and Emergency Department of the Princess Margaret Hospital are drug victims. Many of these patients get dosed on cannabis, prescription drugs, and illegal substances with the aim of getting high. Considering that many young people are hospitalised for drug overdose, other classes of offenders get imprisoned for drug-related offences, while others get involved in fatal road and occupational accidents.

These instances reduce the working population and impacts on the number of healthy and able-bodied people available for nation-building and economic activity.

To deal with this problem, the Ministry of Health continues to partner with schools, prison authorities and other agencies to raise awareness on the dangers of illicit drug use. Individual families, religious bodies, and entire communities also have a role to play in sensitizing people on the dangers of drug abuse and trafficking.

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