The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime has published documents regarding the Joint Global Programme GLOK67 carried out with the support of the World Health Organization and the Union for International Cancer Control.
The Programme is also in line with the Discussion Paper issued by the UNODC for the 54 th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the 2015 report of the INCB and the 2012 WHO Guidelines.
In 2018, UNODC presented a new document " Technical Guidance: Increasing Access and Availability of Controlled Medicines" during the 61st Session of the Commission of Narcotic Drugs. The document provides concrete suggestions to promote access to controlled drugs for medical purposes at the national level and builds on UNODC's first major publication on the issue, the 2011 Discussion Paper " Ensuring Availability of Controlled Medications for the Relief of Pain and Preventing Diversion and Abuse ".
Furthermore the UNODC has also made public the reports of the 2 Pilot Programmes (funded by the government of Australia) aimed at increasing access to controlled substances, carried out in Ghana and more recently in Timor-Leste. The Pilot Programmes have shown that it is possible to overcome the complex set of barriers to access controlled drugs.
In Ghana, before the Pilot Programme was launched, the healthcare personnel, the know-how and knowledge and their infrastructures were not developed enough to increase sustainably the availability of pain relief and palliative care. The " UNODC Report " for the situation in Ghana highlights the improvements and the measures that have been taken to increase the availability of opioids medications. Read More …
In Timor-Leste the programme has just begun the first stages of its work mainly due to the fact that Timor-Leste is a relatively new state (got the independence in 2002). The situation was similar to the one in Ghana, with underdeveloped infrastructure and many issues related to poverty and literacy. Nevertheless the government has produced 2 documents (" Strategic Development Plan for Timor-Leste " and " National health Sector Strategic Plan ") which serve as the starting point for working on increasing availability of controlled medication for medical and scientific purposes. For further information …
A full list of publications issued by the Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation Section of the Drugs and Health Branch at UNODC is available at ...