Brazil – A Representee for the Opioid Crisis in Latin America
Brazil. Known for its white sandy beaches, thirty-degree climate, and breath-taking landscapes. It is a country where millions of tourists flock every year to spend vacation with their family and friends. However, many people do not realize the increase in concern in the development of an opioid crisis within the country. Between the ages of 12 and 65, there are on average 30,000 Brazilians receiving treatment for problems surrounding opioid-related use (1). With that number continuing to rise, two questions start to become the focal point to help mitigate the crisis: “What are the current guidelines to prevent opioid addiction?” and “What are the next steps to accelerate the fight against the opioid crisis?”.
According to an article published in the American Journal of Public Health, opioid use in Brazil has been drastically changing, focusing on advocacy for the use of opioids to treat patients with cancer and other chronic pain (2). Ultimately, the Brazilian government has chosen to channel the majority of their resources and funding to educate the healthcare workers and population about safe opioid prescription and use. Although the country is still seeing a slight rise in opioid addiction and hospitalizations due to opioid-related use, they have decided to address the problem with a preventative solution first. For example, the Brazilian Society for the Study of Pain presented guidelines for health professionals, allowing them to improve their ability to safely prescribe opioids. More specifically, the program discusses opioid therapy and opioid rotation, and how both are linked to opioid addiction (2). Another preventative solution offered by the Brazilian government, was the introduction of a more accurate method of determining optimal doses for opioid prescriptions. Titration was the innovative method that was used to determine optimal doses and it allowed for improved patient function, while simultaneously decreasing their levels of pain (2). Since titration involved the process of ingesting opioids in intervals, dependence and tolerance to narcotics were less prominent.
The foundation of Brazil’s opioid crisis stems from the lack of opioid-related data in the country (3). Brazil has implemented education programs, supervised injection sites, and other possible solutions to tackle this issue, but the true effectiveness of these measures when there is no concrete data, can be used as a focal point to determine if significant progress has been made. Therefore, the next step for the Brazilian government should be to increase the number of resources being directed at data collection. For example, the increase in the use of cross-sectional survey data could be a viable option to determine where the country stands regarding its fight against the opioid crisis (2). This data can be pivotal for comparisons of specific populations with opioid use or could even act as general information that can help determine which solutions are most effective. There could also be a larger dependence for gathering data from international databases, such as the International Narcotics Control Board (2). Both routes serve as feasible options to ramp up the collection of opioid-related data in Brazil, hopefully allowing the country to become more prepared regarding its future fight against the crisis.
Ultimately, the opioid crisis in Brazil might have gotten unnoticed on a global scale, but nationally, the country is taking the right steps in its fight against it.
Works Cited:
Maia, L. O., Daldegan-Bueno, D. & Fischer, B. Opioid use, regulation, and harms in Brazil: a comprehensive narrative overview of available data and indicators. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 16, (2021).
Krawczyk, N., Greene, M. C., Zorzanelli, R. & Bastos, F. I. Rising Trends of Prescription Opioid Sales in Contemporary Brazil, 2009–2015. American Journal of Public Health 108, 666–668 (2018).
Kraychete, D. C., Siqueira, J. T. & Garcia, J. B. Recommendations for the use of opioids in Brazil: part I* 14, (2013).
Shandrow, M. How Brazil's Opioid Problems Are Getting Worse. Asana Recovery (2020). Available at: https://asanarecovery.com/how-brazils-opioid-problems-are-getting-worse/. (Accessed: 1st April 2021)