75% of the world’s population lack access to essential pain relief
The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has launched its Annual Report for 2014, which reveals that around 5.5 billion people – or 75% of the world’s population – have limited or no access proper pain relief treatment.
Diederik Lohman, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, says: “In the past five years, recognition is dawning that the war on drugs has turned millions of cancer patients into collateral damage: Nobody intended to deprive access to pain medicines, but that’s what happened.”
In the report, INCB notes that drug control measures do not exist in a vacuum and that, in their implementation of the drug control conventions, States must also comply with their obligations under other treaties, including international human rights obligations.
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