Welcome to the inquiry podcast from the BBC World Service with me Tulep Mazumdar.

Each week we bring you four expert witnesses answering one pressing question from the news. On a recent chilly autumn morning in Washington, D.C. families passed through security gates at the White House, some clutching photos of their lost loved ones.

They never wanted to be making this trip.

They'd been invited to witness an historic moment in their fight to try and ensure what

happened to them doesn't continue happening to tens of thousands more families

across the US.

Effective today, my administration is officially declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency

under federal law.

Opioid prescription painkillers results in 42 deaths every single day in the US. Yet there's another side to the opioid story that we tend to hear far less about.

Used in the right way, these powerful drugs help millions of people manage extreme pain. They are a key part of palliative or end of life care

and ensure people with life-limiting illnesses such as cancer are able to live out their

days without being in constant pain.

But while the US is in the grip of a national emergency because of the overuse of these powerful medicines,

millions of people in other parts of the world are dying in agony because they can't get

hold of them.

So our question this week, are we missing a bigger opioid crisis?

Part 1, supply and demand.

I remember waking up from my mastectomy in Mexico City where we have our home and the pain was so severe that I couldn't breathe.

Felicia Noel had her left breast removed several years ago.

She knows what it's like to endure extreme physical pain, if only, thankfully, for a short time. It took about 10 minutes before the physicians could come and adjust my pain medication.

And those 10 minutes were not only the agony, but the fear of not wanting to breathe because of the pain.

And when I began to think of other women, similar situation,

...