CPAC officially asks federal health minister to restore adequate treatment for people with chronic pain

By GILLIAN SLADE on June 3, 2019.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade

The Chronic Pain Association of Canada has officially asked the federal Minister of Health, Ginette Petitpas-Taylor, to restore adequate pain treatment for those with chronic pain.

Barry UImer, executive director, says the opioid crisis is about illicit drugs and many of them being contaminated. Those given a prescription for an opioid for chronic pain are not the problem and neither are the doctors prescribing it. Chronic pain patients have been unfairly punished.

One in four Canadians suffers with chronic pain, said Ulmer. About a million have severe pain and many have lost or are at risk of losing their prescriptions.

Ulmer is concerned a task force will recommend displacing opiates with acupuncture, yoga, chiropractic, and like therapies that do not relieve severe pain.

“We call on the minister to stop harming innocent Canadians and to immediately take the steps necessary to return decisions about pain care to doctors and their patients,” said Ulmer. “CPAC receives no public or private funding. We believe in mitigating pain by whatever methods work.”

Ulmer says the American Medical Association and other organizations have this month called for an end to “brutal policies that have been weaponized against millions of Americans, stripping them of the medical opiates they need to fight persistent pain.”

Ulmer says this week the US Department of Health and Human Services pain management task force joined this wave of national protest by releasing its own formal caution against the practice of “deprescribing”.

This outcry has come as a result of renewed awareness that prescribed analgesics are critical, irreplaceable, and safe when used appropriately under medical supervision, said Ulmer.

“Large studies put the mortality risk at 0.02 per cent, the same as for rivaroxaban used to prevent stroke and that cutting patients off carries dire consequences that have included death,” said Ulmer.

Dr. Gaylord Wardel, local pain specialist and anesthesiologist, has said several times recently that the underlying cause of all addiction is adverse life experiences.

Ulmer says U.S. figures show the majority of opiate-related deaths involve “illicit” fentanyl and about a third are related to heroin.

“Canadian coroners put the contribution of illicit fentanyl to overdose deaths at more than 92 per cent,” said Ulmer. “Health Canada has recently acknowledged quietly that Canada’s overdoses are driven almost entirely by street fentanyl mixed with other illicit substances, and that prescribed opiates are not involved.”

Dr. Karen Mazurek, deputy registrar the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA), recently defended the guidelines for doctors prescribing an opioid and the monitoring of them. She said the quarterly report given as feedback to each doctor is generally appreciated by doctors.

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