A documentary looking at codeine addiction sweeping through South Africa.
In most countries you need a prescription to buy medicine containing codeine but in south africa it’s easily available to consumers at low-cost abuse of over-the-counter drugs containing codeine is meant to be monitored by providing your id at pharmacies but this isn’t happening we showed our undercover footage to griffith malaya wa from the health products regulatory
Authority that is man buckley assist there just because we decided to call the pharmacy to set up an interview pharmacist phillip fan florida changed his tone when he saw our cameras sure we have some hidden camera footage which shows someone in this pharmacy selling 17 bottles of brown clear to one person who claims that his dealer would you like to see the footage
Can i show you the back stop with the pharmacist the staff needs to know which medication they can prescribe but a pharmacist must always be around to answer any that ot and shouldn’t just lead you to the discretion cause attempt they might give the wrong person i’m the wrong medication to a person and then who’s going to be sued in the ultimate it’s not that so
Persistent it’s very petition we called the pharmacy owner read one sally right would you be available tomorrow for an interview would you be able to come to us unsurprisingly that interview never materialized the pharmacist so now once we get this and that all team could be out of debt and then we get a fine or a prison time we’ll get the particulars we’ll
Send out some of the inspector there to really well check it up and see because this is not on in reality the authority has walked a long road trying to root out codeine addiction in 2015 checkpoint accompanied them on a bust on the east rant with the hawks my brother he wanted three years later the problem seems to have escalated but experts are conflicted on
Whether up scheduling codeine products to prescription only is the answer i think the problem for me if we up scheduled codeine would be that many people would not get access to her ex which would help alleviate pain and and they need that so i think we would be doing a huge disservice particularly people in rural in rural areas who might find it harder to harder
To get access absolutely is not necessarily the answer to type thing i think public education using it responsibly is the way to go the challenge is to keep tabs on who’s buying it in excess we need to get a national database and i cannot get away from that without the national database and i logically think that an id number would be the only way in which we can
Do that from the department side they’ve already done that it is now become legally in french that a patient have to provide their id numbers when they want medication whether it be shade or to substance or whether it be an a’ doctor’s prescription ly so that is part of the regulation in act 101 what will i have to happen is that the pharmacy council will have
To write it in the minimum standards of good pharmacy practice and those two will have to be married in order for us to get this program or hold out but for the addicts we met it’ll take serious intervention to give up on their cheap high i love to put this if i think if maybe we won’t get did somebody just put it aside and see how our lives changes i just always
Think that what would happen if we actually stopped it but then it’s also actually stopping quality crime just be like i’m not using this anymore and your friends are using on arriving you don’t feel easy process and while their heroes are seeing about it they don’t seem to see much wrong with it that’s all from us this week please do give us your feedback our
Twitter handle is at checkpoint and to score anca and our email address a checkpoint a tnc a.com thanks for watching i mean giving him up we say you can watch previous checkpoint episodes on anca calm as well as on youtube subscribe to the en see a youtube channel and click on the checkpoint playlist to watch
Transcribed from video
Lean: South Africa's codeine addiction(3/3) By Health-e News Service
