Monitoring alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse trends in South Africa (July 1996 - December 2014), Phase 37

Abstract

Established in 1996, SACENDU is a network of researchers, practitioners and policy makers from various sentinel areas in South Africa. Up until June 2006 these sites comprised of Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth (PE), East London (EL), Gauteng Province and Mpumalanga Province (MP). As some sites were beginning to also include data from other towns/cities (e.g. Durban included data from Pietermaritzburg and East London included data from SANCA satellite offices in Butterworth, Grahamstown, Fort Beaufort, and King Williams Town), it was decided to begin to report data by province. From the second half of 2006, data were also collected from treatment centres in the Free State, Northern Cape and North West. For the purposes of this report, these three provinces have been combined into a regional group termed the "Central Region". In Limpopo Province data were also collected from one centre in Polokwane from July - December 2007. It was decided to combine this data with data from Mpumalanga and we now refer to these two provinces as the Northern Region. Thus this report now refers to the following six sites: Western Cape, KwaZulu Natal, Eastern Cape, Gauteng, the Northern Region and the Central Region. The goal to include data from al nine of South Africa's provinces in the SACENDU project has therefore been achieved, though there are still gaps in coverage at some sites.