The number one medication in short supply in cancer treatment in developing countries is morphine! This is hard to imagine for someone from a developed nation with the myriad of pain treatments available.
One minute can feel like an hour in pain to a patient in pain.
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“According to the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), more than 3.3 million people with cancer are dying in pain, sometimes in agony, each year. Altogether, tens of millions of people are needlessly suffering pain, and a WHO estimate says that 600 million are going to suffer from untreated pain in their lifetime. The reason is simple: lack of access to basic, cheap and highly effective drugs, notably morphine. Around 70% of cancer deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, where just 6% of the opioid analgesics are consumed.”
Source:
- Fixing the holes in the opioid supply lines:
- Patients are still dying in agony despite concerned efforts over many years to change attitudes towards the use and control of opiates. Could a new initiative, which works with NGOs, governments and policy makers to address practical problems, finally hit the spot?
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"Opioid analgesics are critical to the effective relief of cancer pain. Effective treatment is predicated on sound assessments, individually tailored analgesic therapy, and the availability and accessibility of the required medications. In some countries, pain relief is hampered by the lack of availability or barriers to the accessibility of opioid analgesics." (1)
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"For patients with cancer, and especially those with advanced and incurable cancer, adequate relief of pain is a central goal of care [1, 2]. Indeed, adequate relief of cancer pain is considered to be a human right by many organizations of health care professionals [3–10], but is not yet enshrined in human right conventions." (1)
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