Representatives of the Ministry of Health, who collect data, talk about over 100 registered cases of death possibly related to opiates (mainly fentanyl) in the country. In recent years, they have reported about a dozen per year. The alarming trend was reported in a Facebook post by Yulia Georgieva, manager of the day center for people with opioid addiction “The Pink House“.
She points out that it is high time to categorically point out “the huge problems our country faces in terms of deaths of people who use drugs“.
“In the last year and a half, 44 people have died among the people we work with at the Pink House in Sofia alone! We have lost at least that many more among the people we work with in the field. For the entire period from 2021 to 2023, the deaths of people from the house were 13“, Georgieva points out.
In Sofia alone, within the framework of the activities of the “Pink House“, about 70 people have died in a little over a year. The representatives of the Ministry of Health, who collect the data, talk about over 100 registered cases of death, probably related to opiates - mainly Fentanyl, in the country. In recent years, they have reported about ten per year, the expert on opioid addiction also writes.
According to Yulia Georgieva, part of the problem is that in Bulgaria there is still no thought about providing Naloxone spray for the most needy people, which, according to her, saves lives in almost 100%, but has not been registered at all in Bulgaria. In the ambulance, they only use injectable Naloxone, and only they and the emergency centers have it. “You can imagine how many people with an overdose survive (suffocating) until the ambulance arrives“, Georgieva points out.
She also points out that in Bulgaria, autopsies are not performed on people who have died without apparent reasons (criminal acts, for example) or if their relatives do not request and pay for an autopsy.
“The vast majority of people we work with are not examined postmortem and no one registers their death as caused by an opiate overdose. The diagnosis is usually pulmonary failure or something similar. It is difficult to even imagine the real scale of the disaster that is being kept quiet about“, the expert also warns. She also informed about blood-borne infections:
- In 2024, we conducted a study among 480 people who use drugs in Sofia.
- Of these 480 people we studied, 304 inject or have injected drugs, and the rest take them in other ways.
- 17.5% of all these people were living on the streets at the time of the study.
- 29.6% had been homeless for more than a month in their lives.
- 12.7% were positive for HIV antibodies (17.1 among injecting users and 5.11 among non-injecting users)
- 63.5% had antibodies to HepC (89.1 among injecting users and 19.3 among non-injecting drug users)
- 25% started using drugs at or before the age of 15. The remaining 75% started using them on average by the age of 20.5.
- 22.1% have never been tested for HIV.
Yulia Georgieva points out that against this background, the Anti-Drug Strategy, which was supposed to be launched in early 2025, “has been hanging unapproved for a year“ in the Council of Ministers, and the national program to combat HIV and blood-borne infections expires at the end of this year, and it is not known how far its discussion has progressed, but Georgieva points out that both strategic documents traditionally neglect work with people who use drugs.
The manager of the day center for people with opioid addiction also says that “people at high levels in the Ministry of Health unofficially share their opinion that “there is no point in working on this, they have already died…“
Georgieva also writes:
"At the beginning of the year, we initiated the creation of a working group in Parliament, in the hope that someone there would show interest in good practices for dealing with these problems. The working group degenerated into a neighborhood discussion of laughing gas and pure neglect. No organizations working directly with people who use drugs were invited. Even the representatives of the unit responsible for this in the National Center for the Prevention and Control of Drug Abuse were invited to the last meeting of the working group (which took place somewhat unusually after they had already announced that they would close it).
And no, things will not get better with neglect by the state. They will only get better after deliberate, targeted and well-coordinated actions.
And until then, the Internet and the media will be filled with smoke about pink teddy bears, but also with grave silence about many deaths.
And instead of doing my job, which is truly important, I'm building a house where some of these people can get help…"