Urin.ary Screening for Drug Abuse Among Secondary School Students In Assuit City

Abstract

Drug abuse is a serious threat for all communities. Voices have been raised to warn against the problem. lt is not a modern problem. It has been increased dramatically during the last ten years.

Drug abuse among high school students is a major public concern all over the world. Many countries estimated the prevalence of drug abuse among this group of students, but to our knowkdge it is not estimated yet in Assiut City, so in this work we tried to shed some light to determine this prevalence.

The studied students in this work were one thousand students (750 males, 250 females). Their ages ranged between 16 and 20 years old. They were randomly chosen from 9 schools. The study was canied out during the period from Jammry to April 2001. The acceptances were taken from the Province of Education in Assiut and Health Insurance for students. Verbal consent was taken from each student.

Urine screening had been done for detection of drug abuse. Colour tests were used as preliminary tests and positive cases had been confirmed by thin layer chromatography.

In this study analysis had been done for nine drugs. These drugs were chosen by personal communications with physicians of pshychiatry in Assiut University. These drugs are valbam, tramadol, tussilar, codaphen, parkinol, rivotril, tranxene, mellaril and cannabis.

The percentage of adulteration among urine samples was 6.5% in both sexes. This adulteration was higher in females (8.4%) than males (5.87%).