A shortage of oral morphine in Egypt

This new publication in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization discusses the issues of morphine shortage in Egypt today.

Medical treatment is the main element in cancer pain management and for most patients, relatively inexpensive drugs like morphine are effective. For many years, morphine has been on the World Health Organization (WHO) model list of essential medicines as the strong opioid of choice because of its suitability for management of moderate to severe cancer pain. However, global data on licit opioid consumption shows very low levels in many countries, suggesting that pain control may be inadequate for a large number of patients worldwide, and Egypt is one of these countries. This represents a great inequality between people in countries with access to such essential medication and people in countries without sufficient medication access.

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