Japan partners against pain: An education initiative to promote pain management in Japan

A large scale survey focused on chronic pain in Japan revealed that the people lacks knowledge of pain itself, their pain medication, and where to be taken care of. Recent advances and focus on palliative care and cancer pain management resulted with rapid spread of variety of opioids, fentanyl patch and oxycodone. And so, not only the people's education, but educating physicians and health care providers became an issue. These issues came to the attention of some pain specialists in Japan. With an aim to provide appropriate information on cancer pain and on adequate use of pain medications, regional experts were gathered and JPAP was launched in Nov 2003.