Governments failing to address 'global pandemic of untreated cancer pain'

medscape.org

More on cancer pain, and not pretty:

The new data, released to the public during the ESMO 2012 Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Vienna, paints a shocking picture of unnecessary pain on a global scale, said Prof Nathan Cherny, lead author of the report from Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel, Chair of the ESMO Palliative Care Working Group.

“Unrelieved cancer pain is a cause of major worldwide suffering, not because we don’t have the tools necessary to relive pain, but because most patients don’t have access to the essential pain-relieving medication,” Prof Cherny said. “This pandemic affects literally billions of people. Not only are the patients suffering often terrible unrelieved pain, but their family members are often permanently scarred by the memories of witnessing such suffering in their loved ones.”

Very few countries provide all of the opiods considered necessary for cancer pain and many have imposed severe restrictions on their use, making it hard for some cancer patients to get the pain relief they need.

Governments failing to address ‘global pandemic of untreated cancer pain’.

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