Resources
Neuropathic pain is a blind spot in both medical care and research. Defined as the pain initiated or caused by a lesion or dysfunction of the sensory nervous system, the condition can be disabling and can drive patients to despair. To shed light on existing therapies for neuropathic pain and on the state of the science, and to map a future path in research and education, the nation’s leading pain researchers gathered in Boston on October 20–21, 2008, for the conference “New Approaches to Neurological Pain: Planning for the Future.” This private scientific meeting, focused on the perspectives of neurologists, was sponsored by the Departments of Neurology at Harvard Medical School,Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco.
In 1961, the world community adopted an international agreement—the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs—that proclaimed “narcotic drugs…indispensible for the relief of pain and suffering” and instructed countries to make adequate provision to ensure their availability for medical needs. Today, almost fifty years later, the promise of that agreement remains largely unfulfilled, particularly—but not only—in low and middle income countries. In September 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that approximately 80 percent of the world population has either no or insufficient access to treatment for moderate to severe pain and that every year tens of millions of people around the world, including around four million cancer patients and 0.8 million HIV/AIDS patients at the end of their lives suffer from such pain without treatment.
Site last updated September 2009
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