Cancer Society have unveiled the Pain-Free
Hospital Initiative in four pilot federal tertiary
health facilities.
The Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mr Linus
Awute, who launched the project in Abuja on
Thursday, said the project would improve access
to essential pain medicines in Nigeria.
Awute said the initiative was a one-year hospital-
wide quality improvement intervention to integrate
pain treatment into service delivery by providing
education for patients and staff, raising
motivation, awareness and documenting pain
levels.
"It will equip staff to assess pain and provide high
quality first line treatment," Awute said.
He said the initiative targets large national referral
and teaching hospitals to provide simple
accessible training for physicians, nurses,
pharmacists and other health care providers.
According to him, the four hospitals selected for
the pilot projects are University of Ilorin Teaching
Hospital, University College Ibadan, University of
Nigeria Teaching Hospital Enugu and the National
Hospital Abuja.
"It is envisioned that the one-year pilot project
will further refine the design of the project model
for effective replication in other federal tertiary
health facilities across the country," he said.
Awute said in 2012, no fewer than 177, 000
people were estimated to have died in moderate
or severe pains from HIV or cancer.
"In the same year, the utilisation of narcotic
medicines such as morphine was enough to treat
266 people, representing 0.2 per cent coverage in
pain treatment need.
"In response to this challenge, the ministry
approved the collaboration with the American
Cancer Society's Treat the Pain Programme to
improve access to essential pain medicine," said
Awute.
The permanent Secretary said morphine was now
on the essential medicine list, adding that 19.2Kg
of pulverized morphine was imported to treat
3000 patients in Nigeria.
He said the American Cancer Society 'Treat the
Pain' would provide technical support to the
ministry in this regards.
In her address, the Director Food and Drug in the
ministry, Dr Vera Ogbechi, said the need for the
morphine-equivalent analgesics in Nigeria was
1,122Kg.
She said this was based on the annual deaths
from HIV and Cancer and not including pain from
other causes.
Ogbechi said the collaboration would address
challenges of availability of the drugs, insufficient
clinical training, and poor access to health care. pc ads bottom