In January 2003, the Pain & Policy Studies Group/World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Policy and Communications in Cancer Care launched a new initiative to help improve the availability of opioid pain medications in Eastern Europe and in Romania. The project is in collaboration with various healthcare practitioners and a new Ministry of Health Commission of Specialists in Pain Therapy and Palliative Care. The project entails a study of the availability of opioid pain medications in Romania, and to identify and address provisions in national narcotics control policy and its implementation that may impede patient access to these important medications.

This project is based on the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines “Achieving Balance in National Opioids Control Policy: Guidelines for Assessment.” The Guidelines were discussed at a regional workshop on opioid availability in February 2002 in Budapest, Hungary for teams from six Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. Workshop participants used the WHO Guidelines to evaluate national drug control policies. Following the Budapest workshop, Romania was selected for this project because the Ministry of Health had appointed a commission to evaluate national opioids control policy.

This website contains some of the relevant documents relating to opioid availability in Eastern Europe. It will be continuously updated.

Please address your comments to ppsg@med.wisc.edu.

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