Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad   

Cancer patients cry for relief

Photo: G. Krishnaswamy.

Words of comfort: Patients in advanced stage of cancer of cervix sharing their woes with doctors of M.N.J. Institute of Oncology and Regional Cancer Centre at a support group meeting in Hyderabad on Saturday. --

HYDERABAD: The pain is excruciating. It maims the zeal to live, compelling patients to beg for the inevitable end rather than endure it. Imagine, lugging yourself with such intense pain for days to reach Hyderabad just for a medicine, which promises to relieve the pain.

“We have to come all the way to get these white tablets. Why can’t they keep these medicines in our village clinic,” asks Rehana Begum, who comes from Mahabubnagar every week to get a dose of oral - morphine available only at M.N.J. Cancer Hospital in the State. Pain was the ‘recurring’ theme in a support group meeting between patients who have reached terminal stages of cervical cancer and doctors of M.N.J. Institute of Oncology and Regional Cancer Centre on Saturday. “We know that we can’t live any longer, then why are we made to suffer by coming all the way to Hyderabad?” asks Aatmaaram another patient from Nizamabad.

There is a growing recognition that pain management and palliative care for cancer patients are essential elements to free them from needless suffering. “There are so many misconceptions attached to morphine that it has become a stigma of sorts in our country. Oral-morphine is not at all addictive for patients, but nobody understands it,” points out in-charge of Pain and Palliative Care, M.N.J. hospital G. Durga Prasad.

“Even if we come from our villages, you people do not supply us with complete doses of medicines. Typically, we come four times in a month to replenish the supplies. For terminally ill patients like my mother, it’s cumbersome to come all the way to the hospital,” son of a terminally-ill woman from Hyderabad points out. The relief from pain is getting blocked by strict drug control policies, which are major hurdles for availability and medical use of essential medicines like morphine. “You have to get permission from eight different Government departments to have morphine distribution facility in a hospital.

Moreover, a generation of Indian doctors have not been taught about the uses of morphine. So they never even bother to think about the medicine,” Dr. Prasad says.

In association with NGOs who are working in the field of palliative care, the hospital doctors have been fighting to make availability of this drug in districts.

In fact, International Network on Cancer treatment and Research is also conducting awareness workshops for doctors on the use of opiods.

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