Closing the global pain divide: balancing access and excess

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Access to pain relief medication is one of the most heinous, hidden inequities in global health. The Lancet Commission on global access to palliative care and pain relief called on health systems and their leaders, including academics, to address the so-called 10–90 pain divide—ie, that the richest 10% of countries possess 90% of distributed morphine-equivalent opioids.1 In an accompanying Article published in The Lancet Public Health, Chengsheng Ju and colleagues contribute evidence that supports the Commission's findings: between 2015 and 2019, disparities in opioid analgesic distribution persisted, despite small increases in regional and global opioid distribution, reflecting the inadequate access to opioid analgesics in countries with a low consumption.