The President of Ukraine and the Prime Minister are called to provide incurable people with access to opioid pain medications
March 17-18, 2011, the first national seminar on palliative care called “Provision of access to opioid pain medications” took place in Kyiv. The event was organized by the Ukrainian League of Palliative and Hospice Care (ULPHC) jointly with the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC) and the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) under the support of the Public Health Program of the International Renaissance Foundation.
The seminar participants made public an open appeal to the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and the Prime Minister Mykola Azarov with a call to reconsider the principles of use of opioid pain medications for medical purposes to relieve the pain of patients who need palliative care.
Vasyl Knyazevych, ULPHC Head of the Board, noted the following: “Currently we are initiating the development of normative-legal framework on palliative and hospice care. Its main purpose is to guarantee accessibility of proper pain relief, including the use of opioid pain medications, on the part of the state. In order to help such people, efforts of the public are not enough. First and foremost, the state has to fulfill its obligations to them. The Ukrainian League of Palliative and Hospice Care calls everyone to cooperate and provide proper conditions for incurable citizens.”
According to him, the purpose of the meeting of leading national and international experts, scientists and specialists on palliative care is to search for instruments and resources for reconsideration of legal conditions for provision of access to proper pain relief of palliative patients, in particular by use of opioid pain medications.
Lukas Radbruch, President of the European Association for Palliative Care, expressed a concern that despite recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), Ukraine’s public authorities still have not resolved the issue of medical use of opioid pain medications. “Recommendations regarding medical use of opioid pain medications are generally accepted and based on the principles of evidence-based medicine. Currently the European Association for Palliative Care is working jointly with WHO on improvement of the main principles on accessibility of opioid pain medications in order to achieve the balance between a potential misuse or diversion and provision of access to opioids for medical use medications for proper pain relief of incurable patients. I hope that the dialog between civil society organizations and the government will enable Ukraine to improve the condition of severely ill people and provide them with high quality of life”, said the expert.
Liliana De Lima, Executive Director of the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care, stated the following: “We will facilitate the work of the League with the Ukrainian government to find out what are the reasons for that consumption of pain-relieving drugs, in particular opioid medications, is decreasing while the number of patients who suffer from cancerous and other incurable diseases is not becoming less.” She emphasized that Ukraine’s fulfillment of its obligations regarding access to opioid pain medications for medical purposes in order to ease the life of incurable people is currently under control of the United Nations International Drug Control Program
Every year Ukraine loses 700 thousand citizens and 90 thousand of them die due to cancer disease. Annually 160 thousand citizens are newly diagnosed with oncologic diseases. The state provides opioids pain medication to as little as 20 per cent of the patients. At the same time, up to 80 per cent of the patients in their terminal stage suffer from strong chronic pain and medical people do not have a possibility to ease their suffering. Despite that Ukraine is one of the 62 countries that signed international treaties on accessibility of opioid pain medications for medical purposes, no real steps in this direction have been made so far.
Contact information: Ukrainian League of Palliative and Hospice Care, Lesia Bratsyun, (044) 239 72 43, ligahp@ukr.net
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The mission of the Public Health program is to reform public health, to improve public health through support of new approaches to solution of urgent public health problems, in particular, by introduction of a complex model of protection of the rights of patients, palliative care, and support to people living with HIV/AIDS and non-medical drug use.
