Africa-Press – Mozambique. The number of hospital admissions in Mozambique resulting from drug abuse rose 7.9% to 9,788 in 2020, a source from the Central Office for Prevention and Combat of Drugs (GCPCD) said this Monday.
The head of the Department of Public Education and Outreach at the GCPCD, Orlando Carlos Alberto, told public broadcaster Radio Mozambique that the number of hospitalisations recorded during the last year represents a slight increase compared to 2019, when 9,666 people were hospitalised as a result of consuming psychoactive substances.
“The majority of these people were mostly hospitalised with mental disorders. Our biggest concern at this moment has to do with the consumption of alcohol by adolescents, and also with tobacco, which is a gateway to drug use,” Alberto said.
In 2020, he continued, the city of Maputo, in the south of the country, led the number of hospitalisations due to drug use, with 49.8%, followed by the province of Manica, in the centre of the country, with 11.7%, and Sofala, also in the centre, with 11%.
Drug busts reportedly drop, but government will not say by how much.
Alberto said that the number of illicit drug seizures had decreased, but did not present figures in detail.
Alberto pointed out that his institution was committed to preventing the consumption of narcotics, mainly through lectures directed at young people and adolescents.
Due to restrictions on public events within the scope of Covid-19 prevention, the number of recipients of awareness-raising lectures on the dangers of drug use was reduced by about 50% in 2020, to 755,000, he added.
The number of lectures dropped 5.3% to 15,789, against 16,681 in 2019.
