Published on: December 2, 2023

A global call to improve safe access to immediate release oral morphine

It is estimated that approximately one million people in India suffer from moderate to severe pain every year due to advanced cancer. If people with non-advanced cancer, HIV, and a variety of other progressive, incurable or otherwise life-limiting health conditions are included, experts estimate 7 million people in India are experiencing moderate to severe pain at any given time.

Less than 4% of people in need of palliative care and pain relief have access to it.

Recognising this tremendous gap, Pallium India had first launched The Morphine Manifesto in 2012 

However, in spite of the 2014 World Health Assembly Resolution (which states that provision of palliative care and pain relief is an ethical responsibility of health systems), several reports, studies and publications pointing to the essential role of immediate release oral morphine in mitigating preventable suffering, access remains woefully inadequate, or tangled in barriers in many parts of the world, especially in Low-Lower Middle-Income Countries.

In this light, we have updated the Manifesto with help from colleagues at the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC) and Dr. Eric Krakauer (Director of the Global Palliative Care Program at Harvard Medical School).

We shall launch the updated version, which also aligns with the White Paper on Palliative Care, at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs at a side event on the 5th of December, and use it to call for better access to immediate release oral morphine across the world.

We call on individuals, organisations and institutions to endorse this Manifesto.

It has already received endorsement from all major global and regional palliative care associations and civil society groups.

Join us.