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Hospice and palliative care worldwide
Find an overseas service
worldwide hospice and palliative care online
A free bi-monthly email newsletter from
hospice information and the
UK forum for hospice and palliative care worldwide
which aims to keep people involved in international projects informed about funding opportunities, twinning, publications, disease information, policy and practice. If you’d like to play a part by sharing information and experience with colleagues around the world do sign up for a copy.
To subscribe or contribute to the newsletter, please email us at info@hospiceinformation.info or complete this form and return it to hospice information
The need for palliative care
The facts
- More than 50 million people die every year around the world
- 80 per cent of these deaths will occur in the developing world
- Many of these people will endure intense and unnecessary suffering and pain
- Two thirds of the world's people living with cancer live in developing countries with barely any access to pain and symptom management, let alone curative treatment
Thus, for many of the world's people, palliative care is often the only humane option.
The barriers
Sadly, in the developing world where need is often the greatest, there initially may be
huge barriers to putting a hospice or palliative care programme into action. These may
include:
- non-availability of morphine and other relevant drugs
- lack of professional and public education
- lack of national policy on care of the terminally ill or on cancer pain relief
- lack of financial resources to develop services and train health care workers
- fear that use of opioid drugs will encourage drug abuse
- long-standing conflict
Proper pain control and symptom control can relieve much of the suffering caused by
diseases like HIV/AIDS and cancer but sadly governments have often been slow to
support palliative care services and there are just too few services to meet the need.
Action
The World Health Organization recommends basic measures to establish sustainable palliative care:
- A national policy for palliative care outlining an implementation plan for developing palliative care services
- Education - a commitment to train health workers in managing pain and to educate the public
- Drug availability - ensure that the necessary drugs for pain control are available, especially opioid analgesics (morphine) and a commitment to ensure that laws and regulations allow health workers to treat patients adequately
The response
But thanks to the inspiration of the hospice movement and the efforts of countless
individuals and groups across the world things are gradually changing. It is estimated
that hospice or palliative care initiatives now exist, or are under development, on every
continent of the world in around one hundred countries. The total number of hospice or palliative care initiatives is in excess of 8 000
and include hospice inpatient units, hospital-based palliative care services, community-
based teams and day care centres.
Just as the need is great so is the diversity of the worldwide hospice and palliative care
movement. Find out about a hospice in:
Zambia | Uganda | Southern India | Romania | Poland
Building bridges - links with overseas hospice and palliative care services
Today there are many initiatives - both collective and individual - supporting hospice
and palliative care development across the world. These include:
- 'Twinning' or affiliation between hospices
- Education and training support provided by individual practitioners and by hospices and academic centres
- Limited fundraising in support of an overseas hospice
- Supply of equipment
- Volunteer placements overseas
- Clinical placements at UK hospices
- Bursaries for overseas staff
- Sharing of information and knowledge through publications and the Internet
- Palliative care support for patients who are travelling abroad on holiday
But through effective networking, sharing of expertise, information and support many
more bridges can be built.
Contact us
If you want to know more about hospice and palliative care overseas, look here or contact Avril Jackson.
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