Text from UBC’s International Reporting Program website.
The University of British Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s International Reporting Program (IRP) has partnered with Al Jazeera English to produce Freedom From Pain, a half hour documentary that will air on the program People & Power on Wednesday, July 20.
The journalism graduate students and faculty members working with the IRP discovered that more than half the countries in the world have little to no access to morphine, the gold standard for treating medical pain. They traveled to India, Ukraine and Uganda to investigate how countries around the world deal with suffering patients.
Anyone who has been given painkillers for a sore back, or a morphine drip after surgery, should consider themselves lucky. While morphine is the standard treatment is most Western hospitals, more than half the countries in the world have little to no access to these drugs. Millions of patients around the globe suffer long-term illnesses in excruciating pain.
Unlike so many global health problems, pain treatment is not about money or a lack of drugs, since morphine costs pennies per dose. The culprits are bureaucratic hurdles and the chilling effect of the global war on drugs.
The International Reporting Program traveled to Ukraine, India and Uganda, to uncover this hidden human rights crisis. The resulting report is “Freedom from Pain,” a half hour documentary produced in partnership with Al Jazeera English.
Freedom From Pain is on the Al Jazeera network People & Power and will also stream on http://www.internationalreporting.org/pain.
UBC International Reporting Program
School of Journalism