Vol. 71/No. 44      November 26, 2007

About 40 percent of services in Africa dedicated to reducing pain for patients with prolonged incurable diseases, known as palliative care, face shortages of morphine or its equivalents. The shortages run 35 percent in Latin America and 25 percent in Asia. In Africa 20 percent of all palliative care specialists have no access to morphine or other strong painkillers, and 25 percent lack weaker drugs such as codeine.

These figures come from a recent report, “Access to pain relief—An essential human right,” issued by Help the Hospices, a British charity that trains hospice workers and gives support to hospices in semicolonial countries.  
 
Profits and drug availability
Medical specialists surveyed in the report attributed the shortages to restrictive national drug laws, fear of addiction, poor national health-care systems, and lack of knowledge by doctors, patients, and government officials. All these factors, of course, are connected to the fact that health care and pharmaceuticals are a lucrative business worldwide.

One doctor in Ecuador quoted in the report remarked, “Drug companies are not willing to import oral morphine solution as they will not make enough profit due to spending months on legal papers.”

A doctor in Bangladesh said, “It is simply irrational that oral morphine is not available in the country whereas expensive fentanyl patches can be made available for the rich patients.”

According to figures gathered by a United Nations agency, six imperialist countries—the United States, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia—consume 79 percent of the world’s morphine, an effective and relatively cheap painkiller. Countries in the semicolonial world, where 80 percent of the world’s population live, consume about 6 percent.

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 6 million people a year suffering chronic pain from cancer or late-stage AIDS receive inadequate treatment. Millions more go untreated for other causes of lingering pain.

Restrictive national laws are compounded by the broader social problems facing countries oppressed by imperialism. In the West African nation of Sierra Leone, for example, morphine may be legally handled only by a pharmacist or doctor, not a nurse. But there are only about 100 doctors in the country—one per 54,000 people.

The capitalist priority on profits is also responsible for the lack of access to malaria drugs and AIDS treatment for millions of people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  
 
Contrast with revolutionary Cuba
Is this social catastrophe inevitable? No. Revolutionary Cuba shows the difference it makes when working people run society, putting human needs first, not profits for a few.

Before the 1959 revolution Cuba’s health-care system was largely a privilege for those with money. After workers and farmers took power and overturned capitalist rule, they carried out a socialist revolution.

As a result, in Cuba health care is free, high-quality, and accessible to all. Also contributing to Cubans’ overall well-being were: a campaign that wiped out illiteracy, an agrarian reform giving land to small farmers, the nationalization of industry and a planned economy, and measures to uproot racist discrimination and the second-class status of women.

Today Cuba has 66,000 physicians and a total of 350,000 health-care workers in a nation of 11 million. Cubans have one family doctor per 180 people. There is a medical school in every province.

Cuba has reduced infant mortality to 5.3 per 1,000 live births—the lowest rate in Latin America. (In the United States, infant mortality is 6.8, and for African American females it is 13.6 per 1,000 live births.)

These achievements are despite Washington’s nearly 50-year-long economic embargo, which denies Cuba medicines and equipment that contain U.S.-manufactured or -patented components.

Cuba has tens of thousands of volunteer doctors and other medical personnel providing free, quality care in more than 100 countries. They often work in the most remote areas where other doctors will not go.

Cubans are also training doctors in other countries, and thousands of youth from around the world have received scholarships to study at the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba in order to go back to their own countries and provide medical care to those who would otherwise not receive it.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home