Only the poor die screaming

Pain-relief drugs are quite cheap, yet 25 million people still die in agony each year, mostly in poor countries.

Why haven't governments intervened to force down the prices of painkillers for lower-income countries in the same way they've done for antiretrovirals to control AIDS? 'I don’t think we have cared enough about poor people who have pain,' says researcher Felicia Knaul. Photograph courtesy of Eric Norris

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

January 10, 2018

LONDON, U.K.—If you had a million dollars to spend (but not on yourself), where would it do the most good? Well, the cost to cover morphine or a morphine-equivalent pain-relief treatment for all the sick children younger than 15 years who are in serious pain in low-income countries would be just $...

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