Mati Nejmi, founder of the Moroccan Society of Management of Pain and Palliative comments:

Morphine consumption is increasing each year and is a thousand per cent more important now than in1995. Few Moroccan doctors prescribe morphine because of barriers of ignorance and fear of side effects. But things are changing now, slowly but surely.³

The International Narcotics Control Board⁴ has published the following figures for the consumption of narcotic drugs in Morocco: codeine 519kg; morphine 4kg; pholcodine 119kg; dextropropoxyphene 943kg; ethylmorphine 16kg.

For the years 2000-2002, the average defined daily dose consumption of morphine for statistical purposes (S-DDD)⁵ in Morocco was 3. This compares with other African countries as follows: Swaziland 1; Egypt 2; Uganda 4; Zimbabwe 13; Namibia 73; South Africa 103. Twenty nine countries reported no morphine consumption during 2000-2002 (Table 2).

Table 2 Average daily consumption of defined daily doses (for statistical purposes) of morphine per million inhabitants, 2000-2002: countries of Africa

Source: International Narcotics Control Board Narcotic Drugs: Estimated World Requirements for 2004. Statistics for 2002. New York: United Nations, 2004.