This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

Student journalists from a Canadian university have worked with the broadcaster Al-Jazeera English to produce a documentary revealing that more than half the countries in the world have no access to morphine, the most effective of painkilling drugs.

Freedom From Pain on the network's People & Power strand tomorrow and will also stream on www.internationalreporting.org/pain.

It's the result of work by the University of British Columbia graduate school of journalism's international reporting programme.

The students discovered that the lack of morphine in so many countries is not due to a lack of money because it costs pennies per dose and is readily available.

Instead, the problem is caused by a mixture of bureaucratic hurdles and the chilling effect of the global war on drugs.

Source: University of British Columbia