New global study led by ESMO reveals a pandemic of intolerable pain affecting billions

Lugano, Switzerland –- A ground-breaking international collaborative survey, published today in Annals of Oncology, shows that more than half of the world’s population live in countries where regulations that aim to stem drug misuse leave cancer patients without access to opioid medicines for managing cancer pain.

The results from the Global Opioid Policy Initiative (GOPI) project show that more than 4 billion people live in countries where regulations leave cancer patients suffering excruciating pain. National governments must take urgent action to improve access to these medicines, says the European Society for Medical Oncology, leader of a group of 22 partners that have launched the first global survey to evaluate the availability and accessibility of opioids for cancer pain management.

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