ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE TRENDS: January – June 2007 (Phase 22)
19 November 2007

Background

The SACENDU Project is an alcohol and other drug (AOD) sentinel surveillance system now operational in 8 provinces in South Africa: Western Cape (WC: Cape Town), KwaZulu- Natal (KZN: Durban, Pietermaritzburg), Eastern Cape (EC), Mpumalanga (MP), Gauteng (GT: Johannesburg, Pretoria), Free State (FS), Northern Cape (NC), and Northwest (NW).
The last 3 provinces form part of what is termed the Central Region (CR) and provided data from 2006b. The system, operational since 1996, monitors trends in AOD use and associated consequences on a six-monthly basis from specialist AOD treatment programmes. The surveillance system has been expanded to all provinces during 2007, with Limpopo collecting data from July 2007. This report will focus on data on treatment admissions from the 9414 patients seen across the 72 centres/programmes in the 1st half of 2007.


Latest key findings by substance of abuse (unless stated otherwise the findings relate to the 1st half of 2007)

Alcohol remains the dominant substance of abuse across all sites except WC. Between 44% (WC) and 70% (CR) of patients in treatment have alcohol as a primary or secondary drug of abuse. The proportion reporting it as a primary drug of abuse (Table 1) continued to decrease in MP (44%) and KZN (50%). Treatment admissions for alcohol-related problems in persons under 20 years of age are generally less common, ranging between 4% (WC) and 26% (EC) of all patients in this age group (Table 1).
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