CANBERRA, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Prescription painkillers and illegal opioids are killing three Australians every day, a government agency has found.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) on Friday released a report on opioid harm in Australia, revealing that the number of deaths involving the drugs has nearly doubled in the last decade from 591 in 2006 to 1119 in 2016.
However, the death toll associated with opioids remains lower than the peak in the late 1990s.
Opioids are a group of pain-relieving drugs that include illegal substances such as heroin and opium and drugs that are legal with a prescription from a doctor such as morphine and codeine.
The AIHW report revealed that 15.1 million prescriptions for opioids were dispensed to 3.1 million patients in 2016-17 while 715,000 used prescription medications for illicit, non-medical purposes and 40,000 used heroin.
Oxycodone was the most common prescribed opioid followed by codeine and tramadol.
"Every day in Australia, there are nearly 150 hospitalizations and 14 presentations to emergency departments involving opioid harm, and three people die from drug-induced deaths involving opioid use," AIHW spokesperson Lynelle Moon said in a media release on Friday.
"The number of deaths in 2016 is the highest recorded since a peak of 1,245 in 1999, when the rate was around 7 deaths per 100,000 people."
According to the AIHW, the number of hospitalizations for opioid poisoning rose 25 percent between 2006 and 2016.
"In the case of both deaths and hospitalizations, pharmaceutical opioids were more likely to be responsible than illegal opioids," Moon said.
