Prescription and appropriate use of pharmaceuticals; Access to available medications and technologies; Sustainable health, pharmaceutical companies, rare or neglected diseases; Pain relief treatments

Prescription and appropriate use of pharmaceuticals
"90....As part of their work of societal education about health care, health care workers must call due attention to the use of pharmaceuticals because of the social costs they can entail, among other reasons."


Access to available medications and technologies
"91....Health care workers and their professional associations must become promoters of greater sensitivity in institutions, assisted-living facilities, and the health care industry, so that the right to the preservation of health may be extended....Those responsible for health care activities must allow themselves to be uniquely and forcefully challenged...."
 

Sustainable health, pharmaceutical companies, rare or neglected diseases
92. While not denying certain rights of pharmaceutical companies, there is "the right to access to basic or necessary treatments, or both,  especially in underdeveloped countries, [189]' and especially for "in the cases of rare [The reference notes the European Union understanding to be 0.05% of the population.] and neglected diseases, 191 which are accompanied by the notion of orphan drugs.192  Health care strategies aimed at pursuing justice and the common good must be economically and ethically sustainable...."

Pain relief treatments
"93. Pain has a biological function....Nevertheless, it calls on medicine for palliative treatment...."

"94. 'In the long run, pain is an obstacle to the attainment of higher goods and interests.' 195...."

"95.  For the Christian, pain can take on a noble penitential and salvific meaning....The free acceptance of pain for Christian motives must not suggest that we ought not to intervene to assuage it...."