Although the Union government amended the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985 in 2014 to relax restrictions on the procurement and sale of morphine, terminally ill patients in the State are still dependent only on Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology for the “magic medicine”.
Now, raising hopes of hundreds of patients who require oral morphine, the State government’s Palliative Care Policy is aimed at making the medicine available for free in all government healthcare centres.
Nearly 100 patients from across the State come to Kidwai institute in Bengaluru every month to collect the medicine. Also, with morphine in the solution form available only in Kidwai in the country, patients from other States also come to the institute as taking the pain relieving medicine in the solution form is easier than consuming it in the tablet form.
Kidwai’s annual consumption of morphine is nearly 14 kg now, the highest in the country.
Institute director K.B. Linge Gowda said although under the amended Act, all government hospitals had become “recognised medical institutions” to stock and dispense morphine, only a handful of them had started dispensing the medicine.
The new policy will enable and ensure that the legal and regulatory systems in the State were appropriately reoriented in alignment with the NDPS Act. This would ensure access and availability of opioids for medical and scientific use while maintaining measures for preventing diversion and misuse, he said.
