Week 2:

During this week, I further explored the use of opioids in palliative care, cancer care, and pain care in India.  This started with a precursory web search of the list of medical societies in India in these fields, and following this, I did a preliminary search on articles and other research that might be relevant to the research.  I found three different pain societies to focus on: the International Association for the Study of Pain (based in India), the Indian Society for Study of Pain, and the Indian Society of Pain Clinicians.  Additionally, I found three cancer care societies: Indian Cancer Society, Cancer Patients Aid Association, and Maina Foundation (India Chapter).

Not included in my research data collection itself, I found this article by the Atlantic talking about palliative care in India and the prescription of opioids: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/india-palliative-care/517995

India was found to be ranked 67 out 80 in terms of access to end-of-life care in the global league, although one state, Kerala is the exception.  Kerala seems to have advanced palliative care compared to other states due to a community health approach.  Going into next week, I wanted to focus more on pain societies rather than palliative care societies since opioids are appropriate to be prescribed in that field of medicine.

Week 3:

For my Week 3 of research, I investigated the pain societies of India further and looked at whether any of them had any continued donations from physicians who had anything to gain from promoting opioids.  This week was more focused on the articles written in both the West and in India about how opioids have become more prevalent in India despite having a small percentage of use overall.  However, this statistic (around 2-3%) may be due to underreporting or failure to account for the entire population.  I found some difficulty in finding additional pain societies due to the website search engine I was using being more inclined towards Western websites rather than Indian websites.  Going into next week, I wanted to look at a more direct connection between drug companies and their impact on medical societies, since all donations that individual physicians receive must be reported.  My mentor also mentioned a research database she compiled that I may refer to for next week's research.