Is Gaza facing an opioid epidemic?
The impossible circumstances of day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip has led to a Tramadol epidemic that Hamas is struggling to address.
Addiction to Tramadol, a drug that affects the central nervous system and is used primarily to treat severe pain, is yet another symptom of the plight that so many Gazans face after nine years of living under closure, since June 2007. It appears that abusing Tramadol has become a way of dealing with the absence of any hope for change in the foreseeable future.
Frequent Israeli military operations against the Gaza Strip, economic duress, soaring unemployment and the day-to-day anxiety that is part and parcel of Gazans' harsh lives have led many residents — hundreds of thousands, according to Palestinian sources — to take Tramadol on a regular basis. Exact figures on the extent of the epidemic are not available, but sources in Gaza told Al-Monitor that there is someone in just about every household who regularly consumes the drug.
Tramadol first arrived in Gaza through the Rafah tunnels, after Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, a time when smuggling through the tunnels flourished. A pharmacist from central Gaza who requested anonymity told Al-Monitor that from the time the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Egypt in 2012 until Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Tramadol was a hot commodity in Gaza. He estimated that some half a million pills were sold per day.
According to him, a single packet of 10 pills had initially only cost 10-20 shekels ($2.60-$5.00). “At the time, many of the people living in Gaza were feeling a sense of existential angst because of the various IDF [Israel Defense Forces] military operations and the impossible economic duress,” he said. “This pill is given to patients after surgery. It is not recommended for daily use, but given the overwhelming sense of distress in the Gaza Strip and the cheap cost of a pack of Tramadol, it became a staple in every home.”
