WASHINGTON: US women are dying from overdoses of prescription painkillers at an alarming rate, with five times more deaths in 2010 than 1999, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday.
A total of 6,631 women died from taking pills like Vicodin and Oxycontin in 2010, four times as many as died from heroin and cocaine combined. In 1999, 1,287 women died from prescription painkillers. Overdoses of these drugs killed almost 48,000 women between 1999 and 2010. More men die each year from prescription painkiller overdoses than women, but the rate of increase is much higher among women (400 percent) than men (265 percent).
AFP
