Terminally ill patients forced to seek painkillers on black market – experts

The patients with incurable diseases in Ukraine are often forced to buy painkillers on the black market.

The doctors usually do not know and do not want to prescribe narcotic analgesics, the experts claim.

They are afraid of responsibility and allegations of drug trafficking and embezzlement of public funds as the state must reimburse the costs of medicines for the cancer patients.

“When it comes to the question of compensation of costs, the doctors start to worry about preservation of the state budget, rather than pain relief for the patients,” Lt. Col. of police and drug policy expert Olena Koval says.

Moreover, the patients, not suffering from cancer but requiring pain relief, have little or no access to medicines.

“The doctors say they prescribe narcotic analgesics only to cancer patients. If you have pain of a different nature, such medicines will not be prescribed. This is a big problem if people have traumas, phantom pain. For example, the ATO participants,” Andriy Rokhansky, the doctor and human rights activist, says.

It is difficult to find a pharmacy where these medicines can be bought even for the patients with prescription. The problem is especially acute in small towns. According to the experts, the search often turns out to be a vicious circle: doctors do not prescribe painkillers referring to their lack in pharmacies and pharmacies do not buy these medicines because doctors do not prescribe them.

According to the experts, about 500,000 patients, including 17,000 children, in Ukraine are in need of pain killers every year.

Since painkillers, such as morphine, produce an effect for four hours on average and the patients usually do not get more than one dose per day from the doctors, the black market becomes the only possible alternative for them.