Published on: May 11, 2012

Short Film 50 of 50 in the LIFE Before Death documentary series about the global crisis in untreated pain and the dramatic life changing affect palliative care services can deliver to patients and their families around the world.

In “Spread The Word” we discover the importance of advocacy is raising the pressing issue of access to essential pain medicines and palliative care services around the world.

“Advocacy today I feel is the key,” states Dr MR Rajagopal (India). “True, we need education for the professionals, we need to overcome the regulatory barriers to opioid availability, but though so many people have been trying for so many years in the developing world, there has been so little progress because we have not been able to project it as an urgent need. We have not been able to reach out to the common man because if the decent people had raised their voices the policy-makers and law-makers would have sat up and listened. I do believe that advocacy is the key.”

“Universal access to pain and symptom control, the relief of suffering around the globe, is achievable,” affirms Dr Charles Von Gunten (USA).

“Palliative care is not a big ask,” continues Dr Liz Gwyther (South Africa). “The main thing is awareness and education.”

“Getting people to care about it is the greatest challenge,” reflects Dr Meg O’Brien (USA). “Once we solve that a lot of things will fall into place.”

“An estimated five billion people alive in the world today in countries around this world have limited or no access to controlled medicines including opioid analgesics,” reports Dr John Seffrin (USA). “It isn’t easy but this is a fixable problem.”

“Until the politicians understand that the public are equally concerned, if not more concerned, about access to pain relief as they are about illicit drug use, we won’t get very far,” observes Professor David Hill (Australia).

“The fact that pain causes great suffering but that it can generally be treated with effective and often inexpensive medications, that makes the failure to provide pain treatment a violation of human rights,” reports Diederik Lohman.

Featuring: Dr MR Rajagopal (India), Dr Charles Von Gunten (USA), Dr Liz Gwyther (South Africa), Dr Meg O’Brien (USA), Dr John Seffrin (USA), Professor David Hill (Australia), Dr Kathleen Foley (USA), Diederik Lohman (The Netherlands), Dr Jim Cleary (Australia), Doug Ulman (USA).

–

An amazing milestone…

“Spread the Word” is the the 50th, and final, short film in the LIFE Before Death series.

We’d like to congratulate Mike Hill, the team at Moonshine Movies, Lien Foundation, International Association for the Study of Pain, The Mayday Fund, the Union for International Cancer Control and The Institute for Palliative Medicine at San Diego Hospice on delivering this important work to the World.

If you’ve missed previous episodes, catch up on the LIFE Before Death website…

BUY THE DVD NOW!

HOST A SCREENING! Why not organise a screening in your community? GET MORE INFORMATION HERE…