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Psychiatrists are stakeholders in improving access to controlled medicines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Willem Scholten
Willem Scholten*
Affiliation:
Access to Controlled Medicines, Department of Essential Medicines and Pharmaceutical Policies, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, email [email protected]
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Medicines made from substances that are controlled under the international drug control treaties (‘controlled medicines’) are out of reach for the majority of patients around the world. Seya et al (2011) demonstrated that 5.5 billion people (83% of the world's population) live in countries with little or no access to opioid analgesics, 250 million (4%) have moderate access and only 460 million people (7%) have adequate access. Insufficient data are available for 430 million (7%). If the need for treatment of moderate to severe pain were to be satisfied adequately, the global consumption of strong opioid analgesics would go up from 231 tonnes of morphine-equivalents to 1292 tonnes.

Type
Special Papers
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , November 2011 , pp. 98 - 100
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2011

References

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