LIFE Before Death: A Documentary on the Global Crisis in Untreated Pain

Nearly 80% of people worldwide who need palliative care do not have access to needed medicine and treatment.

LIFE Before Death is a documentary project “comprising a feature film, a one-hour television program and 50 short films about the global crisis in untreated pain and the dramatic life changing affect palliative care services can deliver to patients and their families around the world.” Visit TreatThePain.com to learn more about this initiative.

The LIFE Before Death YouTube channel will feature 50 short films “themed around pain control and end of life issues, releasing one a week for a year from May 2011.”

The first three installments are currently available, as are several teaser and theatrical trailers for the full-length feature film.

Short film 1 of 50 in the LIFE Before Death documentary series about “the global crisis in untreated pain and the dramatic life changing affect palliative care services can deliver to patients and their families around the world.” This film, titled Conspiracy of Silence, “exposes the needless implementation gap responsible for the suffering of millions of people around the world today. Lack of political will and general awareness of this pressing humanitarian cause are blamed for the appalling situation where 80% of all people lack adequate access to essential pain medicines like morphine.”

Short film 2 of 50 in the LIFE Before Death documentary series is titled Quality of Life. It “tells the story of cancer patient Lorraine from San Diego to demonstrate the how medications like morphine can resurrect the lives of patients living with severe pain."

Pain, Pain Go Away is short film 3 of 50 in the LIFE Before Death documentary series. It tells the story of Paula, a breast cancer patient “whose intense 10 out of 10 neuropathic pain landed her in an intensive care unit, curled up in a ball, crying. It was not until Paula was treated with a combination of opiate medications through the care and persistence of her doctor, Dr Jay Thomas of City of Hope cancer hospital in Los Angeles California, that she was able to get any quality of life back.”