Published on: January 29, 2014

The Pain & Policy Studies Group (PPSG) announces its annual release of new and updated opioid consumption data for 2011. For India and most developing countries, the lack of progress is disappointing:

• High-income countries  accounted for nearly 92% of medical morphine consumed in the world, but comprised only 17% of the total population. In contrast, low- and middle-income countries, representing the remaining 83% of the world’s population, consumed a mere 8% of the total morphine consumption.

• 56% of the countries reporting to INCB in 2011 consumed less than one milligram of morphine per person.

• India’s lack of progress after the turn of the century is remarkable. And paradoxically, the per capita consumption of Fentanyl (in terms of morphine equivalence) exceeds morphine!  How can a poor country afford to tolerate this cruel extravagance?  (See palliumindia.live-website.com/manifesto)

 

Drug	mg/capita	ME mg/capita
Fentanyl	0.0015	0.1266
Morphine	0.1204	0.1204
Pethidine	0.0209	0.0052
Total Morphine Equivalence		0.2651

Global data, including India’s, can be accessed at PPSG homepage.

Thank you all at PPSG, for making these data available and thank you INCB for providing them.