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WHO South-East Asia Regional Workshop on expanding availability and access to palliative care
Overview
- About ten million people in South-East Asia are estimated to be in need of palliative care, account for about 17% of the global need.
- World Health Assembly in 2014 passed a resolution urging Member States to work on strengthening health systems to integrate palliative care into continuum of care with emphasis to primary care and universal coverage scheme, to ensure domestic funding and human resources, and to include palliative care as integral component of ongoing education and trainings.
- In the backdrop a significant variation in availability of palliative care services between countries, with only less than half of the countries reporting palliative care being ‘generally available’, reaching 50% or more of the patients in need, and just one country being in the phase of integrating palliative care into mainstream health services, WHO convened the WHO South-East Asia Regional Workshop on expanding availability and access to palliative care in October 2023 in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
- Among other things the workshop emphasized on prioritizing country dialogue, formulating policies, building capacity in palliative care with focus on primary health care workers, the opportunity for leveraging nursing manpower, shared care and care coordination across different levels of health care, and dignified death and optimal medical intervention in life limiting illnesses. The workshop also supported country teams in an exercise on developing country roadmaps for expanding availability and access to palliative care.
- The proceedings and outcome of the workshop are summarized in the workshop report.