National drug observatory report of the Republic of Mauritius

The National Drug Observatory (NDO) is a new institution comprising officers of the Ministry of Health and Quality of Life, other Ministries and NGOs as well as other stakeholders.

Given the general public interest in up to date data on the prevalence of drugs and drug issues, the NDO has taken all precautions in presenting data and information available as at 30th June 2016. This Report also makes reference to the drug situation in 2015.

Since no standard questionnaire or recording schedule has been specifically designed in the data collection exercise, the core of this report contains secondary data (i.e data already collected by organizations other than the NDO working group).

Care should be taken in the interpretation of indicators (except those based on previous surveys) as they are essentially of a “reported” nature.

This report covers drug-related issues like the trends and patterns of illicit drugs use and trafficking, legislation and strategies, enforcement of drug control law, injecting-drug use, drug and imprisonment, drug-related health problems, suspected drug use in educational institutions, drug dependence treatment, rehabilitation and prevention programmes amongst others.

In view of the novelty of the task of the NDO, capacity building has been conducted by Consultants from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC).

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