Palliative care from diagnosis for every advanced cancer, including opioid access, worldwide
Palliative care given early alongside cancer treatment improves quality of life and sometimes survival, and most of the world has no access to it or to morphine. Make both universal.
Early integrated palliative care improved quality of life, mood and in some trials survival in metastatic cancer (Temel 2010), and is guideline-recommended, yet is delivered late or not at all in most settings; the Lancet Commission on palliative care documented that most of the world's population lacks access to opioids for pain. The proposal is a global standard: automatic palliative care referral at diagnosis of advanced cancer, trained generalist palliative capacity in every cancer unit, and a financed programme guaranteeing affordable oral morphine and essential palliative medicines in every country.
- Pain relief and palliative care are unavailable to most · Most people who die of cancer worldwide do so without adequate pain relief.
- Most of the world has almost no cancer care · Seven in ten cancer deaths happen in low- and middle-income countries, where radiotherapy, pathology, surgery and drugs are scarce.