You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Maddie Sappaya here with NPR Global Health and International Development Chorus

Bobette, Nareet Eisenman. Hi, Naree.

Hi, Maddie.

So you were in Uganda recently reporting on a story about how healthcare workers treat

patients in extreme physical pain.

Right.

They've turned to a creative solution, a drug that might surprise some people in the US.

Yeah.

In the US, drug makers have flooded the country with these powerful sophisticated opioids

that are at the center of the opioid epidemic.

That's the US opioid crisis.

Right.

But in Uganda, and in fact in a lot of African countries, for years, they've been dealing

with their own opioid crisis, which is the opposite issue.

Patients there don't have enough access to major pain killers.

Why is that?

It's a combination of governments not spending on it, not making it a priority, which when

it comes to an internationally controlled narcotic substance, there's a lot of red tape.

So there's not many options beyond simple pain killers.

Like I'd be profan, see the benefit, and what a lot of us know is Tylenol.

That's not usually enough for people in extreme pain, like from cancer.

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