Drugs Banned, Many of World’s Poor Suffer in Pain

Ana Escalante — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 09:03:21 -0500

September 11, 2007 - 08:00, New York Times

Story Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/health/10pain.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Teaser:
Like millions of others in the world’s poorest countries, she is destined to die in pain. She cannot get the drug she needs — one that is cheap, effective, perfectly legal for medical uses under treaties signed by virtually every country, made in large quantities, and has been around since Hippocrates praised its source, the opium poppy. She cannot get morphine.

WATERLOO, Sierra Leone — Although the rainy season was coming on fast, Zainabu Sesay was in no shape to help her husband. Ditches had to be dug to protect their cassava and peanuts, and their mud hut’s palm roof was sliding off.

But Mrs. Sesay was sick. She had breast cancer in a form that Western doctors rarely see anymore — the tumor had burst through her skin, looking like a putrid head of cauliflower weeping small amounts of blood at its edges.

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Drugs Banned, Many of World’s Poor Suffer in Pain