New Delhi
\nNearly 26 million people die every year worldwide in serious pain without a three-cent morphine tablet and almost every 10th mortality is that of<\/p>\n
a child, researchers said on Friday.<\/p>\n
India, among eight of the largest global populations, was meeting the needs of just four per cent of those requiring pain relief, The Lancet<\/p>\n
medical journal reported warning of a “global pain crisis”.<\/p>\n
More than 75 per cent of the world’s population lives in countries that provide less than half of the morphine needed for palliative care.<\/p>\n
The crisis can be solved easily through an essential package of palliative care to be made available by health systems worldwide.<\/p>\n
According to the report, the most comprehensive global analysis of palliative care, some 61 million people world over suffer serious physical<\/p>\n
and psychological suffering and pain each year.<\/p>\n
Of this total, some 83 per cent live in low and middle-income countries where access to low-cost, off-patent morphine is rare or completely<\/p>\n
unavailable, even though the cost should be pennies a tablet.<\/p>\n
The annual burden in days of severe physical and psychological suffering is huge, six billion days worldwide, 80 per cent in the low and middle-<\/p>\n
income countries, according to The Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief, which studied this health issue for<\/p>\n
three years.<\/p>\n
Of the 298.5 metric tonne of oral morphine distributed worldwide, only 10.8 metric tonne, 3.6 per cent, go to low and middle-income countries.<\/p>\n
“The pain gap is a massive global health emergency which has been ignored, except in rich countries,” an official statement quoting Felicia<\/p>\n
Knaul, chair of The Lancet Commission and Professor at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami, said.<\/p>\n
This global pain crisis has relief too!<\/p>\n
The Lancet Commission calls for an essential package of palliative care to be made available by health systems worldwide. At the centre of the<\/p>\n
essential package is immediate release, oral and injectable morphine.<\/p>\n
In high-income countries, a pain-relieving dose costs three cents per 10 mg. In the low-income nations, the same morphine cost 16 cents<\/p>\n
where and when it is available.<\/p>\n
For Julio Frenk, co-author and President of the University of Miami, the results are startling.<\/p>\n
“The pain gap is a double-edged sword with too little access to inexpensive opioids for poor nations and misuse by the rich ones. The<\/p>\n
enormous disparity between need and availability of opioids for palliative care is growing and skewed against people living in poverty,” Frenk<\/p>\n
said.<\/p>\n
Pain reliever opioid is a compound resembling opium in addictive properties or physiological effects.<\/p>\n
The major problem is in eight of the countries with the largest global populations. China has enough opioid analgesic to meet the needs of only<\/p>\n
16 per cent of those needing pain relief; India four per cent; Indonesia 4.2 per cent; Pakistan 1.5 per cent; Nigeria 0.2 per cent; Bangladesh 3.9<\/p>\n
per cent; Russia eight per cent; and Mexico 36 per cent.<\/p>\n
Brazil has enough for almost 75 per cent who need it. Among the 10 most populous nations, only the US has the opposite problem, an opioid<\/p>\n
epidemic.<\/p>\n
Of the 172 countries studied, 25 had essentially no morphine, while a further 15 had enough to meet less than one per cent of pain relief<\/p>\n
requirements.<\/p>\n
“To improve the usefulness of the report, we used case studies and examples how individual countries overcame individual problems,” Lukas<\/p>\n
Radbruch, another co-author and Chair of Palliative Medicine at the University of Bonn, said.<\/p>\n
India is among the countries that solves palliative care delivery problems.<\/p>\n
In Kerala, a single programme expanded into a network of 841 palliative care sites and prompted the design of palliative care policies in other<\/p>\n
states, said the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Delhi Nearly 26 million people die every year worldwide in serious pain without a three-cent morphine tablet and almost every 10th mortality is that of a child, researchers said on Friday. India, among eight of the largest global populations, was meeting the needs of just four per cent of those requiring pain relief, The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7727,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7725\/revisions\/7727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}