The Opioids For Pain: Why Low and Middle-Income Group of Nations Do Not Have Enough of It?

Abstract

Chronic pain, if untreated, leads to formidable physical, psycho social, and economic burden that has consequential impact on quality of life. Suffering due to Cancer, HIV infection, and many others with life-threatening conditions, have grown into a mammoth sized problem demanding the need for adequate analgesic care in patients, especially in the form of palliative care.Availability of morphine, the cornerstone for control of such pain is extremely limited and thus remaining far below the global mean explains a general lack of government policies in spite of recognizing palliative care as an essential tool for addressing these issues. World Health Organization (WHO), recommends and offers the best approach for developing skills with knowledge, to implement cost-effective measures accessible to each needy member of developing countries by prescribing suitable analgesics according to its defined ladder. In an analysis done by GDPO (Global Drug Policy Observatory) in 2013, it was found that about 83% of the world’s population in over 150 countries have either no access or minimal access to morphine and other controlled drugs. But it’s true that access to morphine quickly gaining ground in high income group, but global distribution discrepancies in accessing pain relief are plainly visible.