USA Has The Highest Level Of Overdose Deaths Among Most Developed Countries

The US has the highest rate of overdose deaths among twelve other wealthy or developed nations, according to research from U.S. News. In fact, the number of drug related deaths in the US are actually more than double what they are in Australia, Chile, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Wales (based on a survey from the World Health Organization’s mortality database from 2001 to 2015).

More recent figures have shown that the extent of the problem is still huge in the US. In 2017, the number of overdose deaths in the US reached a record high of 71,568, according to an article by Fortune. This is largely attributed to the opioid crisis which includes fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that nearly accounted for half of all overdose deaths in 2016. When you analyse a specific city or region in the US and its drug problem, you see how opioids have been the main cause of overdose deaths. A report came out about Tennessee’s opioid crisis in the last week, saying that 1268 of the 1776 overdose deaths were opioid related. This is an example of how the opioid crisis is fuelling the national drug problem which has resulted in the US having the highest level of overdose deaths among the most developed countries.

Randox Toxicology can help…

Through our revolutionary Biochip Array Technology, we are able to simultaneously test for multiple drugs and drug metabolites from a single sample. We provide testing panels for the screening of new psychoactive substances (NPS I & NPS II) as well as our drugs of abuse panels, which are able to detect common opiate substances like fentanyl and heroin metabolite 6-MAM.

We also manufacture our own exclusive ELISAs, reagents and quality control materialsand automated systems suitable for forensic, clinical and workplace toxicology.

If you would like to find out more about our drug screening solutions, email us at info@randoxtoxicology.com