As explained in the
Projects’ Control System section describing the
Integrated Control System, for economic,
security, and sociological reasons, individual
Poppy for Medicine projects should be
implemented in Afghan villages, with several individual projects clustered together in
a single district.
The world faces an ongoing shortage of poppy-based medicines. Essential poppy-based medicines such as morphine play a fundamental role in the treatment of pain, and the
overall worldwide need for adequate and sustained pain relief is increasing. Millions of people, particularly cancer and HIV/AIDS sufferers in emerging countries, live and die in unnecessary pain because their needs for essential morphine medicines are not being met.
Consumption concentrated in a handful of rich countries
Just a few wealthy countries consume the significant majority of the global supply of poppy-based medicines. The United States, Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, together representing less than 20% of the world’s population, accounted for more than 95% of the total morphine consumption in 2005. The remaining 80% of the world’s population has a combined morphine consumption representing less than 5% of the global total. This hints at a significant under-consumption of morphine affecting most of the world.
Current supplies well below the actual needs
The average consumption of morphine was just 4.90 mg per person worldwide in 2005. However, the majority of the global morphine supply was consumed in North America (55.5 mg per capita) and in Western European countries (24 mg per capita). Consumption per capita only amounted to 1.0 mg in Latin America. It remained below 0.3 mg in Africa and the Middle East, and was even lower (0.2 mg per capita) in continental Asia. Morphine consumption rates significantly lower than that of Western Europe betray an extensive gap between the supplies of, and actual need for essential poppy-based medicines. Most countries in the world have little to no access to morphine.
An alarming shortage of morphine for the treatment of Cancer and HIV/AIDS
In 2005, to meet the pain needs of the end-stage HIV/AIDS and cancer patients in Latin America, a further 6.6 metric tons of morphine was needed, but just 600 kg of morphine was actually used, leaving 91% of these patients’ pain needs unmet. In 2005, 98% of the pain needs of dying HIV/AIDS and cancer patients in Asia went unmet. The 2 million people who died of HIV/AIDS and cancer in sub-Saharan Africa in 2005 consumed less than 1% of the quantity of morphine they needed. An enormous quantity of morphine would be required worldwide to meet the needs for the treatment of pain associated with end stage cancer and AIDS alone.
Afghan-made morphine to address the global need
Poppy for Medicine projects would allow the Afghan government to sell village-made morphine at an affordable price to patients in countries currently lacking access to this essential medicine. The Afghan government, having bought the morphine from the village projects, could then sell to individual states at a competitive price, due to the
low cost of morphine manufacture in local village based projects. As such, Afghanistan could establish itself within international markets with a unique and highly competitive product.