Morphine

As I rounded on the palliative care service at the hospital today, we came across an empty bottle of morphine sitting alone on a shelf in the nurses station.

This lonely, empty bottle, speaks volumes regarding the access to appropriate analgesia in Kenya for patients with pain. As a palliative care physician, when you find an empty bottle of morphine in the nurses station at high noon, you have a pretty good idea how much pain relief the patients have received thus far that day, and it breaks your heart.