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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
[24] and stakeholders are alarmed at the rate at which people are misusing tramadol [25]. The Ghana Health Service has declared the issue as a national concern and putting in place measures such as seizures to control it. Since 2017, over 500,000 capsules of tramadol have been seized from chemical stores (licensed and non-licensed) and drug peddlers in the country [26]. However, despite warnings of possible side effects of tramadol, empirical studies on motivations for escalating use of tramadol for non-medical purposes are limited, thereby limiting evidence-based policies. Based on this premise, the overall aim of this study was to offer a qualitative evidence on motivations for non-medical purposes tramadol use in Ghana. The paucity of research and its relevance for the health of the youth especially explains the need for the study. Findings from this study would guide the fight against tramadol misuse by helping authorities and policymakers to design strategies to lessen tramadol misuse among the youth.MethodsStudy design and contextConsidering the exploratory nature of the study, a qualitative approach was adopted to present a deeper understanding of motivations for non-medical use purposes of tramadol in Kumasi, Ghana. The qualitative approach offered a maximum interaction between the researchers and the interviewees which generated a meaningful collaborative effect [27]. As a result, the researchers and participants were interdependent and mutually interactive and remained open to new knowledge throughout the study.Participants and sampling procedureParticipants for the study were a purposive sample of commercial vehicle drivers and assistants in Kumasi who use tramadol for non-medical reasons at the time of the study. The study involved these groups mainly because evidence suggests that tramadol is mostly misused in Ghana by groups including commercial vehicle drivers and their assistants [2, 7, 25]. The researchers recruited the participants during their usual working hours at the
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