Poland begins monitoring opioid prescriptions after fentanyl deaths

Poland’s health ministry has introduced a monitoring system for opioid prescriptions amid concerns about a growing number of cases linked to the use of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 20 to 40 times more potent than heroin that has been linked to almost 75,000 deaths. in the United States last year. .

Since the beginning of this year, Poland’s state sanitary inspectorate has registered almost 50 cases of fentanyl poisoning, and at least four recent deaths have been linked to the drug. Wyborcza newspaper every day.

On Monday, Health Minister Izabela Leszczyna told broadcaster Polsat that she had instructed her ministry’s e-health center to “constantly monitor the issuance and fulfillment of opioid prescriptions.”

Fentanyl can legitimately be prescribed as a form of pain relief, for example for cancer patients or those recovering from surgery. However, there are concerns that some doctors are issuing prescriptions for illegal drug use.

Marek Tomków, president of the Supreme Pharmaceutical Council (NIA), told Polsat that existing measures to prevent such prescriptions are clearly not working. He noted that once a prescription is issued by a doctor, there is little pharmacists or police can do.

The health ministry’s new monitoring system aims to detect anomalies in the number of opioid prescriptions being issued. The information will then be passed on to the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspectorate (GIF) and, if deemed necessary, law enforcement authorities will be informed.

Leszczyna emphasized that “this monitoring will be carried out at the level of doctors and medical entities” and that “patient data will absolutely not be transferred anywhere” and will remain confidential and secure.

Tomków noted that the case is part of a wider problem with abuses of the prescription system – particularly through prescriptions obtained through online consultations – aimed at obtaining drugs for illegal use.

Last year, Poland’s former government imposed limits on the number of prescriptions individual doctors could issue in an attempt to prevent such practices.

The United States in recent years has been hit by the abuse of fentanyl. The drug was responsible for more than 74,000 deaths in the country in 2023, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics.

In February this year, three people in the town of Żuromin in Poland died of fentanyl overdose. Last week, a death that occurred in the city of Poznań late last year was confirmed as Poland’s first known fatality from fentanyl.

Find more statistics at Statista

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Main image credit: Ministeristwo Zdrowia (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a student of political communication at the University of Amsterdam. She specializes in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.