- → fifty-two million people die each year
- → it is estimated that tens of millions of people die with unrelieved suffering
- → about five million people die of cancer each year, to which can be added the numbers of patients dying with AIDS and other diseases who might benefit from palliative care
- → that many people die with unnecessary or untreated suffering has been well documented in many studies and published in hundreds of scientific papers and reports
- → in developed and developing countries alike, people are living and dying
- ☛ in unrelieved pain
- ☛ with uncontrolled physical symptoms
- ☛ with unresolved psychosocial and spiritual problems
- ☛ in fear and loneliness
- → this is the suffering that could be helped or prevented with palliative care
- → the World Health Organization (1990) and the Barcelona (1996)
- Declarations both called for palliative care to be included in every country’s health services
- → the relief of suffering is an ethical imperative
- ☛ every patient with an active, progressive, far-advanced illness has a right to palliative care
- ☛ every doctor and nurse has a responsibility to employ the principles of palliative care in the care of these patients
Source:
The IAHPC Manual of Palliative Care 3rd Edition
https://hospicecare.com/what-we-do/publications/manual-of-palliative-care/
