Health security

Dispatches: In Russia, Don’t Tell the Living About the Dead

Prompted by a seemingly endless string of stories about suicides by people suffering from cancer pain, the Russian government has finally been pressured into acting - by barring the media from reporting on the issue.

The story begins with a February 20 article in an online news outlet, Pravoslavie i Mir, about the suicides of two cancer patients who had reportedly suffered from severe pain that was not properly treated. Russian cancer patients have long faced significant barriers to accessing pain killers like morphine. The article quoted the wife of one of the patients as saying that her husband “had been suffering from constant pain caused by cancer and often said that he was tired of his illness.”