About GAPRI
The Global Access to Pain Relief Initiative (GAPRI) is a joint programme of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) to make essential pain medicines universally available by 2020.
- GAPRI’s projects are designed to address the following objectives:
- Empowering governments to take the lead in expanding access to pain relief
- Mainstreaming the issue of pain treatment in the global health agenda
- Strengthening health systems
- Improving the market for essential pain medicines
Why the GAPRI Initiative is important
More than 2.9* million people die each year in moderate or severe pain without access to adequate pain treatment – even though the World Health Organization (WHO) considers morphine an essential medicine for the treatment of pain. Morphine is safe, effective, inexpensive, and easy to administer in resource-constrained settings. However, a web of barriers prevents millions of individuals from accessing pain relief and forces them to live and die with treatable pain. These barriers include legal and regulatory restrictions, weak health systems, inadequate training of healthcare workers, and misconceptions about pain and its treatment.