HEALTHCARE ACCESS: Palliative care awareness critically low despite its recognition as a human right

Palliative care remains poorly understood despite being recognised as a human right, according to an appeal for greater awareness and access. Advocates argue that it should form part of universal health coverage for people living with life-limiting or life-threatening illness.

The World Health Organization defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and families by preventing and relieving suffering. It involves early identification and careful assessment and treatment of pain and other physical, psychosocial and spiritual problems.

The care is person-centred and cannot be reduced to a single service. A dedicated interdisciplinary team may include the patient and family, nurses, social workers, doctors, occupational and physiotherapists, speech therapists, dieticians, counsellors, psychologists and spiritual carers.

Support should begin at diagnosis and continue through the illness, dying and death. It also extends to bereavement care after death. Palliative care can take place in intensive care units, general hospital wards, outpatient clinics, doctors’ rooms, long-term care facilities or the home.

Each person’s needs create a different “care puzzle”. Quality care addresses physical, psychological, social and spiritual wellbeing together. Pain relief, symptom management or counselling alone can provide important support, but do not amount to comprehensive palliative care.

“

Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.