Lack of palliative care kills more than 25.5 million people annually
Worldwide, more than 25.5 million people a year die with serious physical and psychological suffering as a result of disease, injury or illness according to a major new report published in The Lancet.
The authors have developed an essential package of palliative care services – including medicines, equipment and staffing models - to be made available by health systems worldwide, and call for more balanced global policies to facilitate access to opioid analgesics to meet medical need, while limiting non-medical use.
The authors note that almost 80% of deaths requiring palliative care in low income countries are preventable with adequate prevention, treatment and care interventions. They highlight that palliative care cannot be a substitute for improved access to public health interventions and treatments that could have prevented much suffering and premature death in the first place.
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