©Ruth Fremson/The New York Times |
Doing Without: A hospital in Sierra Leone, where painkillers often are not available. |
A survey of specialists in Africa, Asia and Latin America has produced a disturbing portrait of the difficulties in offering pain relief to the dying in poor countries. Many suffer routine shortages of painkillers, and the majority of specialists got no training in pain relief or opioid use during their medical education.
Comment: We suspect that there's much more that the medical community agrees on, and we came to believe and live by, due to "informational cascade". Which, one must bare in mind, it starts from those in power and then "cascades" to reach each household.