Published 28 October 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4404
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4404

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Lack of palliative care causes unnecessary suffering for India’s terminally ill people

Peter Moszynski

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Although India is one of the world’s leading suppliers of medical opium, many thousands of its citizens experience excruciating pain every year because they do not have access to the drug, says a report published this week by the charity Human Rights Watch.

It says that most cancer hospitals, including those that receive direct support from the government to offer cancer care, do not have morphine or doctors trained in using it.

Lead researcher Diederik Lohman told the BMJ, "This is despite the fact that more than 70% of their patients are incurable and likely to require pain treatment and palliative care.

"Many of the patients we interviewed for our study told us their suffering was so bad that they would prefer to die than live with the pain. Ironically, India is one of the world’s biggest producers of opium, the raw material for morphine, but most of it . . . [Full text of this article]


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Strive to save lives but understand that death is inevitable
Nagappan Kumar
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