El Consorcio sobre Control de Drogas y Acceso a Fármacos presenta su nueva página web

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new website from the Drug Control and Access to Medicines (DCAM) Consortium.

The DCAM Consortium is an international collaboration of experts on drug control regulation, drug treatment, HIV, and pain and palliative care. The participating institutions include:

• The Center for Health Law, Policy and Practice at Temple University Beasley School of Law,
• AIDS Projects Management Group, and
• The Pain and Policy Studies Group, University of Wisconsin

The Consortium was funded by the U.K. Department for International Development to support and contribute to efforts by a range of stakeholders to reduce policy-related barriers that prevent patients from receiving controlled medicines for pain and drug dependency.

The central purpose of the DCAM website is to assist all organisations and individuals interested in accelerating access to medicines policy change by providing the guidance materials and data they need.

New interactive web features

A central feature of the DCAM website is 2 new interactive web features for exploring opioid consumption data and generating hypotheses about patterns of opioid consumption.

• Interactive opioid consumption maps: This feature displays opioid consumption data on a global map, with each country color coded by level of consumption; allows users to select which drug (codeine, fentanyl, hydromorphone, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, pethidine and morphine equivalence) and year (1964 – 2008) to display; provides an immediate visual image of the variation in consumption of opioids across the world.
• Interactive graphs for exploring opioid consumption trends: This feature allows users to explore relationships over time between opioid consumption and other country characteristics, such as Gross Domestic Product or Human Development Index. There are several dimensions of these charts that users can make use of to explore these relationships: X + Y Axes (users can select indicators using the drop-down boxes along the chart axes), time, country, colors, and size of bubbles.

Collection of Resources

The Consortium consulted with and collected resources from experts in the fields of pain management / palliative care and HIV/AIDS / Medication Assisted Therapy (MAT) to find examples of best policy and guidance documents for each field. These resources are available on the new site in a searchable database. DCAM’s aim is that this website is the beginning of an ever-expanding central repository for global information on access to opioid medications for pain management and MAT to serve as an information hub for advocates around the world.

The new site can be accessed here.