Cancer patients do not get enough analgesics

More than half of the world's population is medically underserved

28/11/2013

More than half of the world's population has no way of providing enough pain-relieving medication. To this result is currently a study of „European Society for Medical Oncology“ come. Thus, adequate care fails, especially due to far-reaching anti-drug laws, which would provide strong restrictions in many countries. The report concerns particularly developing countries.

Anti-drug laws prevent access to medicines
Like the European Society for Medical Oncology and its partner organizations in the project „Global Opioid Policy Initiative (GOPI)“ found that more than half of all people worldwide lack sufficient access to painkillers. According to the report, this shortage is caused above all by the numerous anti-drug laws in many countries, which define many active substances as a drug and therefore can not be used for freely available drugs.

Investigation of access to codeine or morphine
For the study, the researchers had evaluated questionnaires sent to non-government doctors in many developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. The focus was on the question of the extent to which seven low-cost active substances such as codeine or morphine are available in the respective countries - because these funds are considered indispensable, especially in the treatment of cancer.

„Pandemic of overregulation“
The researchers came to a frightening conclusion: „The GOPI study has revealed a pandemic of overregulation in much of the developing world, making it catastrophically difficult to provide basic drugs to relieve severe pain in cancers“, said the lead author of the study, Nathan Cherny.

Palliative medicine and obstetrics are also severely affected
In addition, according to Nathan Cherny, there are also enormous deficits in health care in other medical areas: „Most of the world's population is denied access to opioids for pain therapy in cancer, palliative care, acute post-operative obstetric care and chronic pain.“

„Scandal of global proportions“
For Nathan Cherny, this situation is completely incomprehensible: „Considering that effective treatments are cheap and available, untreated cancer pain and the terrible consequences on patients and their families are a scandal of global proportions, "said ESMO Palliative Care Working Group Chair.