HIV/AIDS and access to pain relief

[Guest guest]

Dear colleagues,

My name is Diederik Lohman and I work for the HIV/AIDS program at Human Rights

Watch (www.hrw.org). My colleague and I are coming to India next week to look at

the situation with pain relief access for people with late stage AIDS and

cancer.

The idea is to collect information about the pain relief gap that exists,

analyze government policies (or policy failings) that contribute to that gap,

and formulate recommendations as to steps that ought to be taken to make pain

relief more accessible.

Our goal during our trip is to interview a) people who are suffering from

unrelieved or inadequately relieved pain and their caregivers about living with

pain; doctors, hospital administrators and other healthcare professionals

about regulations on procurement and prescription of morphine, education for

healthcare providers on palliative care, possibly fear of unwanted attention

from law enforcement agencies when prescribing morphine, etc; and c) policy

makers in the area of public health.

I would be very grateful for any contacts with organizations that run or know of

palliative care programs or are otherwise involved in providing care to people

in late stage AIDS (or cancer).

We’re particularly interested in such organizations and projects in Hyderabad,

Kolkata (and West-Bengal more generally), and Rajasthan.

But information about organizations and projects elsewhere would also be very

helpful.

My email is lohmand@...

Thank you very much,

Diederik Lohman

--

Diederik Lohman

Senior Researcher

HIV/AIDS and Human Rights Program

Human Rights Watch

+1 212 216 1282 (t)

+1 212 736 1300 (f)

lohmand@...

Diederik_lohman (Skype)