Poland starts monitoring opioid prescriptions following fentanyl deaths

Poland’s health ministry has introduced a monitoring system for opioid prescriptions amid concerns over a growing number of cases relating to the use of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 20 to 40 times more potent than heroin that was linked to almost 75,000 deaths in the United States last year.

Since the beginning of this year, Poland’s state sanitary inspectorate has recorded almost 50 cases of fentanyl poisoning and at least four recent deaths have been linked to the drug, reports the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

On Monday, health minister Izabela Leszczyna told broadcaster Polsat that she had instructed her ministry’s e-health centre to “continuously monitor the issuing and fulfilling of opioid prescriptions”.

Fentanyl can be legitimately prescribed as a form of pain relief, for example for cancer patients or those recovering from surgery. However, there are concerns that some doctors are issuing prescriptions for illicit use of the drug.

Marek Tomków, president of the Supreme Pharmaceutical Council (NIA), told Polsat that existing measures to prevent such prescriptions are clearly not working. He noted that, once a prescription is issued by a doctor, there is little that pharmacists or police can do.

The health ministry’s new monitoring system is intended to detect anomalies in the number of opioid prescriptions being issued. The information will then be passed on to the Chief Pharmaceutical Inspectorate (GIF) and, if deemed necessary, law enforcement authorities will be informed.

Leszczyna emphasised that “this monitoring will be carried out at the level of doctors and medical entities” and that “patient data will absolutely not be transferred anywhere” and will remain confidential and secure.

Tomków noted that the issue is part of a wider problem with abuses of the prescription system – in particular through prescriptions obtained via online consultations – aimed at obtaining drugs for illicit use.

Last year, Poland’s former government introduced limits on the number of prescriptions that individual doctors can issue in an attempt to prevent such practices.

The United States has in recent years been blighted by the abuse of fentanyl. The drug was responsible for over 74,000 deaths in the country in 2023, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics.

In February this year, three people in the town of Żuromin in Poland died due to fentanyl overdoses. Last week, a death that occurred in the city of Poznań at the end of last year was confirmed as being Poland’s first know fentanyl fatality.

Find more statistics at Statista

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Ministerstwo Zdrowia (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.