EU expert meeting on the EMCDDA key epidemiological indicator Drug Related Deaths (DRD)

The 2012 annual meeting of the key epidemiological indicator ‘Drug-related deaths and mortality among drug users’ (DRD) took place in Lisbon on 12 and 13 November. The meeting brought together 43 national experts, mostly from EU Member States, but other countries were also represented.
The meeting reviewed the European situation on drug induced-deaths (overdoses) and updated the participants about developments in the second component of the indicator (mortality among cohorts of drug users).
In addition, a session was dedicated to cross-indicator analysis, involving several participants’ DRD data, estimations of prevalence of problem drug use or prevalence of injection, or other combinations of indicators.
Cocaine-related deaths and the analysis of drug-induced deaths (overdoses) in relation to the prescription of opioids and painkillers were the topics of two sessions. Workshops were held on emergency data and on the reporting of new psychoactive drugs. A special session was dedicated to the interventions to reduce DRD.
Finally, a satellite workshop was dedicated to a multi-country (8 countries) project on studies of mortality among cohorts of drug users.