Across the world, there is an urgent demand for palliative care as the global population ages and the burden of noncommunicable diseases continues to increase.
At present, only 10% of the people who need palliative care are receiving it, says the World Health Organization (WHO).
The agency estimates that more than 56.8 million people are in need of palliative care. Most of these patients (78%) live in low- and middle-income countries.
The WHO is calling for "urgent and concerted action" to increase access to quality palliative care services. To this end, it has released two new reports. The goal is to help countries assess the development of palliative care and improve the quality of palliative care services.
The urgency of this issue was emphasized by a 2017 report in The Lancet. That was the first study in which investigators provided a worldwide estimate of the extent of serious suffering related to illness and injury and the resultant need for palliative care and pain relief.
As reported by Medscape Medical News,that report found that more than 25.5 million people die every year without adequate relief for serious physical and psychological suffering. It identified a number of barriers to pain relief and palliative care, including what the researchers termed "opiophobia" in reference to prejudice and misinformation regarding the appropriate medical use of opioids. The investigators also cited as a problem the focus in medicine on cure and on extending life while neglecting caregiving and quality of life as patients near death.
