Outdated drug policies leave millions of Africans in agony
The war on drugs has hurt patients who need painkillers
ANNA HAS just hit puberty and she can barely move. She has late-stage cancer and a tumour protrudes from her neck. As a nurse walks in, Anna (not her real name) slowly covers her face with a veil. She is dying in agony in Dantec, one of Senegal’s main hospitals. But the doctors don’t have enough morphine to give her.
In west Africa there are just 52 palliative-care centres such as hospices for about 360m people. Many of these do not have enough drugs. In Senegal the average patient who needs it gets 13mg of morphine a year, compared with 55,704mg in America. Across sub-Saharan Africa nine-tenths of cancer sufferers in moderate or severe pain die without the relief granted by opioids.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Of puritans and pain"
Middle East & Africa February 2nd 2019
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