African Union ministers address access to medical opioids

Palliative care advocates' key goal was to support the AU in developing clear policies to improve access to medical opioids.

Last month on April 13, African Ministers of Health converged in Addis Ababa for the First Session of the African Union's Specialised Technical Committee on Health, Population and Drug Control (STC-HPDC-1).

The session’s theme, “Challenges for Inclusive and Universal Access” provided the opportunity to look at inter linkages between health and drug control.

Dr Gilles Forte, focal point for essential medicines at the World Health Organization, was at the meeting to provide expert consultation on controlled medicines and on the issue of the potential scheduling of ketamine.

A key outcome of behind-the-scenes palliative care advocacy efforts included a series of drug control recommendations around the scheduling of ketamine, including a Ministerial call upon Member States to:

• unanimously support non scheduling of ketamine internationally as essential, especially for trauma in emergency and in war situations, with limited alternatives available.
• undertake legislative review to allow the roles of doctors to be shifted to specifically trained nurses, enabling them to prescribe oral morphine to patients in severe to moderate pain with an allocation of funds that would include policy maker and health professional training.

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