Medical experts have called for the fight against tik to be intensified after revealing that a shocking number of women abuse the highly addictive drug while pregnant.
The Head of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Tygerberg Hospital, Professor Johan Smith, says a whopping six percent of the 70 000 to 90 000 women who gave birth in the Western Cape this year abuse tik.
A recent study headed by his department, incorporating all public hospitals in the province, found that between 4000 to 5000 pregnant women used tik.
Professor Smith says that the tik pandemic is draining medical resources.
“This is a massive number and the use of crystal methamphetamine puts a massive strain on the medical infrastructure,” he says.
Tik is also responsible for a high number of birth defects in babies, and premature birth.
Experts at Tygerberg Hospital say premature birth in the Western Cape ranges between 13 and 22 percent per annum, and most could have been prevented if mothers were not addicted to tik.
Professor Smith warns: “Tik predisposes mothers to premature births and then all the big problems, such as physiological and anatomical developmental problems, which we see with premature births, are likely to follow.
“The issues must be addressed socially and in the communities for it to have any positive effect on parents.”
Dr Mark van der Heever of Western Cape Government Health says the effects of substance abuse was worryingly prevalent in the province.
He listed tobacco, liquor and tik as the top three drugs of choice for pregnant women.
“Substance abuse disorders are extremely high in the Western Cape, this includes foetal alcohol abuse, the methamphetamine [tik] epidemic and a growing problem of heroin abuse.
“Mowbray Maternity Hospital reported the incidence of substance use in pregnant women has increased almost threefold over the past five years with tik being the drug of choice.”
But Van der Heever says the drug problem often goes hand-in-hand with other social evils, and won’t be eradicated until the latter are also addressed.
“Many of the mothers who abuse substances are homeless and underprivileged, many of these mothers use substances when they are pregnant and their babies are born with hereditary [congenital] abnormalities or irreversible abnormalities of the baby’s heart, kidneys and digestive system,” he explains.