Lancet Commission 2017: Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief
2017
This Lancet Commission report calls upon the global health community to alleviate the global burden of health-related human suffering by providing equitable, worldwide access to palliative care and pain relief. The practice of palliative care, defined as a core component of universal health care, has been ignored in most parts of the world, especially in the failure to provide pain-relieving medicines such as morphine and other opioids to sick and dying people. It describes current global conditions, outlines challenges and opportunities, and presents a framework and methodology to achieve universal access goals.
The Commission report, first published online in late 2017, emphasizes that overcoming the access abyss requires collective international action, and it sets forth recommendations and strategies for global implementation. These include integrating a cost-effective package of essential medicines and equipment into universal health coverage, adopting a metric for health-related suffering to describe the state of the world’s health, and amending inflexible regulatory policies that inhibit the medical distribution of opioids. The report is accompanied by several related comments, editorials, peer-reviewed articles, and an in-depth profile of Felicia Marie Knaul, chair of the Lancet Commission and long-time advocate for better pain relief and palliative care.
Lancet Commission 2017: Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief
Source:
Knaul FM et al. Alleviating the Access Abyss in Palliative Care and Pain Relief—An Imperative of Universal Health Coverage: The Lancet Commission Report. The Lancet 2017; 391(10128): 1391–1454. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32513-8.