Sep 20, 2011 – 10:04 AM ET
By Gerry Bellett
VANCOUVER — A study by University of B.C. journalism students says the global war on illicit drugs is preventing patients suffering terminal illnesses in some countries from having sufficient access to morphine to control their pain.
The yearlong study by the UBC Graduate School of Journalism involved teams travelling to India, Ukraine and Uganda to see how those countries manage pain.
The Pain Project report was released in advance of a United Nations conference in New York this week on the global challenges of treating cancer and other diseases.
Prof. Peter Klein, UBC’s acting graduate-school director, said that unlike many global health problems, pain treatment is not about money or lack of drugs, as morphine costs pennies per dose and is easy to manufacture.
He said bureaucratic hurdles and the chilling effect of the war on drugs were the main obstacles to morphine access in some countries.
“The story of global morphine shortages is one of those issues that both the media and the medical community has overlooked,” said Klein.
He said he became interested in pursuing the story after talking with a member of Doctors Without Borders who’d found a lack of morphine in a number of countries he’d visited.
“For instance in India, which is the largest supplier of medical morphine in the world, it’s virtually unavailable in most parts of the country except for one state,” said Klein.
Klein said some countries, such as India, had over-reacted to UN regulations regarding access to opiates — an unintended result of the war on drugs.
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