Morphine: The cheap, effective pain-relief drug denied to millions

It's cheap, effective and easy to administer - so why are millions of people around the world dying in pain, without access to morphine?

In an open ward at Mulago Hospital in Uganda's capital city, Kampala, an elderly woman named Joyce lies in the fifth bed on the left.
She has twisted the sheets around herself, her face contorted by pain. Joyce's husband, thin and birdlike, hovers over her.
Joyce has cancer - it has spread throughout her body - and until a few days ago, she was on morphine. Then it ran out.
"She's consistently had pain," says a nurse. "And she describes the pain to be deep - kind of into her bones."
The Ugandan government makes and distributes its own morphine for use in hospitals, but poor management means the supply is erratic.
"We're in a very difficult situation," says Lesley Henson, a British pain specialist on duty at Mulago Hospital. They have patients whose pain has been kept under control with morphine - but they are running out of it
BBC-NEWS