Mortality of drug users in the EU: coordination of implementation of new cohort studies, follow-up and analysis of existing cohorts and development of new methods and outputs : Project CT.99.EP.07

ENGLISH :
Since 1996, the Department of Epidemiology ASL RM E, Rome, Italy has been coordinating a project promoted by the EMCDDA, aimed to produce and compare mortality rates estimates across European countries by the implementation of cohorts of problem drug users enrolled and followed-up according to a common methodology. The overall objective of the EMCDDA project is to promote and co-ordinate the setting up of cohorts of problem drug users recruited through treatment centres in EU Member States, in order to estimate overall and cause-specific mortality rates and analyse and compare temporal trends in mortality across countries for monitoring purposes.
The project has been developed in the following phases, carried out in co-operation with a team of key experts from the 11 European countries involved:
- Overview of published studies on mortality of problem drug users that have been undertaken in Europe and development of a standardised protocol to assess overall and cause specific mortality rates among PDUs.
- Evaluation of the feasibility of implementing the standardised methodology in different European countries. In order to help researchers in implementing mortality cohort studies and to enhance comparability of results from different countries, the EMCDDA drafted specific guidelines based on the standard protocol.
- Promoting and co-ordinating the implementation of cohorts of problem drug users recruited in treatment centres. The project aims to implement new (prospective) cohorts of drug addicts and to follow them up periodically in order to produce updated mortality rates estimates.