(Press-News.org) In advance of a United Nations conference today on the global challenges of treating cancer and other diseases, the UBC Graduate School of Journalism has launched an ambitious multimedia site, The Pain Project, which documents one of the greatest challenges to treating chronic illnesses: severely constrained access to morphine.
The Pain Project, www.internationalreporting.org/pain, results from a year-long investigation by UBC's International Reporting Program (IRP). Teams traveled to India, Ukraine and Uganda to determine how these countries manage the pain of patients suffering from cancer and other terminal diseases.
Unlike many global health problems, pain treatment is not about money or a lack of drugs, since morphine – the gold standard for treating pain – costs pennies per dose and is easy to make. The IRP found that bureaucratic hurdles, and the chilling effect of the global war on drugs, are the main impediments to access to morphine.
"This story of global morphine shortages is one of those issues that both the media and the medical community have overlooked," says Prof. Peter W. Klein, a former 60 Minutes producer who led the project and acting director of UBC's Graduate School of Journalism. "I'm proud we've been able to shed light on this hidden human rights crisis."
In an interview with UBC students for the project, the executive director of the UN Office of Drug Crimes admits that one of the side effects of drug laws that curtail access to legitimate medical opiates is that some patients around the world suffer needlessly.
The high-level UN Conference on Non-Communicable Diseases begins today in New York and continues Tuesday.
The website features a color-coded map that shows the scope of the problem, which extends beyond the developing world. Videos from each of the three countries showcase the stories of patients struggling with pain, and the caregivers who have gone up against intractable systems in order to help them, including:
A former KGB agent in Ukraine who is dying of prostate cancer and sleeps with a gun under his pillow, in case the pain becomes unbearable
A Ukrainian man who risks jail time by trafficking narcotics to get patients access to morphine
An Indian doctor, frustrated with drug laws, who combines readily available analgesics to ease the pain of local cancer patients
A nurse who led a successful movement to reform Uganda's rules around morphine distribution and palliative care
Traditional medicine's role as the first line of treatment for most Ugandans
This website is part of an ongoing project about global access to morphine, which includes a documentary for Al Jazeera, "Freedom from Pain," which aired on July 20, 2011.
This is the third project of the International Reporting Program. Its first documentary, "Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground," was produced in partnership with PBS Frontline/WORLD and won the 2010 Emmy Award for Outstanding Magazine Investigative Reporting. Its second project, "Cheap Shrimp: Hidden Costs," was an online multimedia project for the Globe and Mail and has just been nominated for a prestigious Online News Association Award.
###
This year's IRP fellows included: Jes Abeita, Sarah Buell, Rebecca Cheung, Evan Duggan, Daniel Hallen, Emily Jackson, Jenna Owsianik, Niamh Scallan, and Robyn Smith. Trisha Sorrels Doyle, Dan McKinney and Sarah Carter helped lead teams in the field. Kim Frank is editor, Erin Empey is the website producer and Carolyn Pritchard is the multimedia supervisor.
The International Reporting Program is the result of a gift from Alison Lawton and Mindset Social Innovation Foundation to UBC's Graduate School of Journalism.
For more information, visit www.journalism.ubc.ca, www.internationalreporting.org and www.mindsetfoundation.com.
Previous UBC International Reporting Program projects:
Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground (PBS Frontline):
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/index.html)
Cheap Shrimp: Hidden Costs (Globe and Mail): http://www.internationalreporting.org/shrimp/
Freedom from Pain (Al Jazeera):
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/07/2011720113555645271.html)
END
EUGENE, Ore. -- (Sept. 19, 2011) -- The thought of toys being given out as part of children's meal deals might be easier to swallow, and better for you, if the toys are part of a collectible set and tied to healthy, nutrition-rich food choices. Who says? Kids and their parents do.
The findings of a new study come during a time of debate over obesity in the United States -- about one-third of adults are now obese, as are 17 percent of children ages 2-19, notes the Centers for Disease Control -- and the growing belief that toys with fast-food meals only serve to put fatty, ...
SalesFUSION, the maker of SalesFUSION 360, an integrated sales and marketing demand generation platform, debuted a new native version of its marketing automation application for Dynamics CRM 2011 this summer. Known as inDynamics because of its native email and web analytics features, SalesFUSION's unique approach on integrating marketing and sales for Microsoft CRM brings the power and feature set of an enterprise app inside the Dynamics CRM framework.
SalesFUSION recently announced that over 110 companies are actively using its marketing automation platform with Dynamics ...
Daejeon, the Republic of Korea, August 8, 2011—Can a flexible LED conformably placed on the human heart, situated on the corrugated surface of the human brain, or rolled upon the blood vessels, diagnose or even treat various diseases? These things might be a reality in the near future.
The team of Professor Keon Jae Lee (Department of Materials Science and Engineering, KAIST) has developed a new concept: a biocompatible, flexible Gallium Nitride (GaN) LED that can detect prostate cancer.
GaN LED, a highly efficient light emitting device, has been commercialized in LED ...
In more than 70 per cent of legal disputes over informed consent, patients allege the doctor failed to properly explain the risks of complications, a University of Melbourne study published in the latest Medical Journal of Australia has found.
Professor David Studdert from the Melbourne School of Population Health and Melbourne Law School and co-authors reviewed nearly 2000 negligence claims against doctors insured by Avant Mutual Group Limited and complaints lodged with the Health Services Commissioner of Victoria between January 2002 and December 2008.
The authors ...
A new paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, explains weaknesses in our understanding of climate change and how we can fix them. These issues mean predictions vary wildly about how quickly temperatures will rise. This has serious implications for long term political and economic planning. The papers lead author is Dr Nigel Fox of The National Physical Laboratory, The UK's National Measurement Institution.
The Earth's climate is undoubtedly changing, but how fast and what the implications will be are unclear. Our most reliable models rely ...
Scientists at Queen's University have pioneered a new combination treatment for prostate cancer. The treatment, which has been successful in phase one of trials, will now be tested for efficacy in a second phase.
The treatment, aimed at men with an advanced and aggressive form of prostate cancer which has spread to the bone, is the first of its kind to be developed. It combines traditional chemotherapy treatments with two doses of a radioactive chemical which can target areas of the bone affected by prostate cancer.
Aggressive and advanced prostate cancer is responsible ...
Current policy pressures on universities to focus on improving their research excellence and to widen participation make it hard for them to engage meaningfully with excluded communities, according to research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). University-community engagement remains marginal to the organisation, funding, management and strategic control of universities. This reduces their benefits for excluded communities.
"Traditionally, universities have regarded excluded communities with an air of detached benevolence," says Dr Paul Benneworth ...
To cost‑effectively protect the climate, not only an emissions
trading scheme but also financial support for new technologies is
needed. Economising on targeted funding, for example for renewable
energies, makes climate protection more expensive ‑ as scientists of
the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) now
calculated for the first time, using a complex computer simulation
that spans the entire 21st century. Without funding, energy
technologies with high cost reduction potentials will hardly stand a
chance, ...
Using this garment-based patient biomonitoring platform allows us to register a number of the patient's physiological parameters in a non-intrusive manner. "The information gathered by an intelligent t-shirt using e-textile technology is sent, without using wires, to an information management system, which then shows the patient's location and vital signs in real time", explain the UC3M researchers. The system is designed to be used in hospitals and can be divided into two parts: the fixed infrastructure, which would be pre-installed in the hospital, and the mobile units, ...
For the first time, a major cultural institution is leveraging four Guide by Cell mobile technologies to provide a wide range of interactive choices for the visitor experience.
This summer, San Francisco's Fort Mason Center launched the year-long "SEAT" exhibition featuring over 30 Bay Area artists, each creating their own interpretation of a "seat."
SEAT is the first exhibition in the country to integrate the full Guide by Cell suite of mobile services. The SEAT works, built by local architects, concrete designers, blacksmiths, woodworkers, ...
