Wainaina Wa Ndung'u

8 September 2010

Nairobi — An acute shortage of morphine has thrown health professionals caring for terminally ill patients into a spin.

Morphine, an outlawed drug for healthy persons, is used to relieve pain in patients suffering from life threatening diseases like cancer.

Sources at hospices - the voluntary homes that provide care to patients suffering from terminal diseases - said the supply of the drug dried up two months ago.

The importation of the drug is controlled by the Pharmacy and Poisons Board.

Being an addictive drug, all supplies and dispensation are tracked to the end user by the International Narcotics Control Board which also issues import quotas based on per capita consumption in a country.

Mr Mohamed Ahmed, the Poisons Board head of pharmacy practice, admitted the shortage but would not comment on the reasons promising a line professional in charge of the issue would get back to us. He had not done so by the time of going to press.

One of the suppliers said on Wednesday that new supplies were expected at the end of the year or at the earliest in November.

Health workers in the palliative sector say morphine is the preferred medication for patients nearing the end of their lives, a period characterised by intense pain.

Palliative care-givers say it has no alternative because patients who require it would have graduated from other weaker drugs such as Ibuprofen.

But Dr George Ngatiari, the provincial director of public health in Central Province, said morphine use was not encouraged even in terminally-ill patients because it was addictive, expensive and thus easily abused.

Professionals say the nearest alternative to morphine would be fentany. But it is even more expensive and has not been available in the country for many years.

Another importer of the drug blamed the shortage on its low consumption rate, making it uneconomical.