In January 2012 I began studying for a cross-disciplinary PhD supervised by David Clark and Sandy Whitelaw from the End of Life Studies Team at the University of Glasgow’s Dumfries Campus. My thesis, entitled ‘The Treatment of Pain in India: power and practice’, was borne from the notion that global health improvement initiatives, despite being… Continue reading
Pain is a far-reaching phenomenon, present in all of our lives, whether it be the daily pain of hunger, the pain of loss, of bereavement, or following trauma, a heart attack or long-term disease, even terminal cancer. Untreated pain is a great burden – to individuals who suffer emotionally and are predisposed to further complications… Continue reading
Arriving in Mumbai, the city I am most familiar with in India, I reflected on how much had changed for me back home in the last year: a new home, a new job, and a husband. The noise, smells and sights of India felt reassuringly familiar. Less than 24 hours later I boarded a flight… Continue reading
So, another year and another trip to India. During the last three years I have travelled to various cities of India to attend the yearly conferences of the Indian Society for the Study of Pain (ISSP) and the Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC) in order to collect data for my social science doctorate, looking… Continue reading
In a briefing note published in 2009, the World Health Organization estimated ‘that 5 billion people… have no or insufficient access to treatment for moderate to severe pain’ . Much of the dialogue related to this lack of access has focused on the availability of the opioid drug morphine, but despite several high profile… Continue reading
