While Americans are confronting an epidemic of prescription drug abuse, particularly for addictive painkillers, the reverse problem prevails in much of the world.
Many ill people with a legitimate need for drugs like oxycodone and other narcotics known as opioid analgesics cannot get them and are suffering and dying in pain, according to health officials, doctors and patients' rights advocates.
In Russia, India and Mexico, many doctors are reluctant to prescribe these painkillers, fearful of possible prosecution or other legal problems, even if they believe the prescriptions are justified.
In Kenya, health officials only recently authorized the production of morphine, one of the most effective drugs for pain relief, after criticism that it was available in only seven of the country's 250 public hospitals. In Morocco, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch reported in February, only a small fraction of physicians are permitted to prescribe opioid analgesics, which the country's law on controlled substances identifies as poisons.
And in most poor and middle-income countries, these drugs are restricted and often unavailable, even for patients with terminal cancer, AIDS or grievous war wounds.
The reasons include an absence of medical training, onerous regulations, costs, a focus on eliminating illicit drug use and, in some cultures, a stoic acceptance of pain without complaint. The problem has been amplified, public health experts say, by the stigmatization of the drugs, partly from fear of what has happened in the United States, where opioid misuse is a growing cause of death.
Reinforcing this view has been publicity about high-profile users like Prince, the pop star who died last month at his Minnesota mansion as friends sought help from an addiction specialist to treat what was apparently a dependence on opioid painkillers.
"While clearly there are issues with some prescribing practices, there's also clearly a risk to vilifying these medicines," said Diederik Lohman, associate director of the health and human rights division at Human Rights Watch.
In some countries, Mr. Lohman said, "a clerical error in a morphine prescription" can lead to criminal inquiries. "The fear associated with prescribing a medicine under strict scrutiny makes physicians afraid," he said.
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