Needless Pain: Government Failure to Provide Palliative Care for Children in Kenya

Kenya has high and increasing rates of childhood disease and child mortality. Hundreds of thousands of children suffer from AIDS, cancer, sickle cell disease, and other chronic, often fatal, or otherwise life-limiting illnesses, and they often experience severe, debilitating pain. Almost all of this pain can be easily alleviated. Morphine, the mainstay medication for treating severe pain, is inexpensive and easy to administer–but widely unavailable in Kenya, especially for children. Palliative care–a field of medicine that seeks not to cure disease but to prevent suffering and improve quality of life–can be delivered at home, in a hospice, or a hospital. It focuses on treating pain and other physical symptoms, and providing psychosocial support.