The public should put pressure on the state to solve the problems of palliative patients - V. Knyazevich
KYIV. May 23. UNN. Limiting access to opioid drugs, the system was not fighting drug addiction, but palliative patients. The problem of patients' lack of access to analgesia is very scary and painful. International organizations stated that about 80% of Ukrainians who died suffered incredible pain. The Chairman of the Board of the Association for the Promotion of Palliative and Hospice Care, former Minister of Health of Ukraine Vasyl Knyazevich, reported this to UNN with reference to the NGO "Ukrainian League for the Development of Palliative and Hospice Care". According to him, Ukraine with its legacy of Soviet times was very far from taking care of the problems of a dying person.
"Even when I was a minister, I stated at one of the collegiums that palliative and hospice care would become one of the priority directions in the ministry's activities. At that time, most of those sitting in the hall did not even understand what we were talking about. And there is nothing surprising, this is a relatively new topic for Europe as well - the first hospices began to appear there only in the second half of the twentieth century. But their society was ready for this, and we, with our legacy of the Soviet times, were very far from taking care of the problems of a dying person. We had them destroyed by the millions and it was just a statistic. So, after my resignation, after it became clear that this topic was on the decline, I traveled around Ukraine, analyzed everything, and together with like-minded people, we created the All-Ukrainian public organization "Ukrainian League for Promotion of Development of Palliative and Hospice Care".
Thus, according to the expert, for a long time the development of palliative care, and in particular, the solution to the problem of patient access to painkillers, was hindered by laws that limited the use of opioid drugs.
The system thus supposedly fought drug addiction, although in reality it fought against palliative patients.
"This is a very terrible and painful problem - international organizations stated at the time that about 80 percent of Ukrainians who died suffered incredible pain. Laws that limited access to opioid painkillers as a way to combat drug addiction stood in the way. In fact, the system did not fight with drug addicts, but with sick and especially palliative patients. In addition, it so happened that as a minister I was directly involved in the signing of some such normative documents. Therefore, for me, it was also strengthened by a sense of my own duty - to start this mechanism in the opposite direction and give people the opportunity to live without pain. We very actively lobbied on this issue in the government, in the Verkhovna Rada, and had the support of international experts and the Renaissance Foundation. And in the end, we succeeded in a lot - the procedure for prescribing painkillers was changed, so that a sick person can receive at his place of residence as much as he needs to get rid of pain. In addition, the production of domestic tableted morphine was launched, now it is produced by three Ukrainian pharmaceutical companies," said V. Knyazevich.
In addition, he added that the public should push the state to solve the problems of palliative patients.
"Society should push the state to resolve these issues, one might say, put pressure on it. After all, the State Program for the Development of the Palliative Care System was developed back in 2008, but it still remains unapproved and unfunded. I understand that now the war and the value of human life is passing into the category of statistics, but still, this issue cannot be left out of sight and this control should be carried out by the public.
Secondly, we must, and we are doing it successfully, change the view of this problem in society, educate a special philosophy of attitude towards death and towards those who are on the edge of life. After all, one way or another, sooner or later, this topic affects every family - and the extent to which we will be ready for compassion, for mercy, for understanding to spend our taxes on this - this will depend on what help each of us can count on, if we find ourselves in such a situation.
Moreover, palliative patients are not only cancer patients, whose days are numbered, they are people with mental disorders, kidney diseases, after a stroke or heart attack... Who among us is immune from this?" - added V. Knyazevich.
We will remind, as UNN reported , every fifth villager dies of cancer in agony every year .
According to statistics, 85% of seriously ill patients in Ukraine do not have access to pain relief.
According to experts, the punitive drug policy of the state in relation to opioid drugs is unjustified.
So, according to statistics, those who use pharmaceutical drugs for narcotic purposes make up less than 1% of the total number of drug addicts in Ukraine .
Accordingly, according to People's Deputy O.Musia, the drug police should do their job, and not ban drugs in Ukraine.
We will also recall that, according to the doctor, a component of the problem of access to pain relief is stereotypical thinking.
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