COVID-19 and palliative care capacity, African Region

Abstract

Palliative care is included within the universal health coverage goal of the
sustainable development goals as an essential health service and is considered a human right. The seventy-third World Health Assembly recommended palliative care as a core component within the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) response plans of Member States. However, the neglect of palliative care is a well established problem worldwide. Of the roughly 60 million people experiencing serious health-related suffering who would benefit from palliative care in a given year, over 80% live in developing countries where such care is scarce or non-existent. Mortality projections from the World Health Organization show an anticipated rapid increase in serious health-related suffering at the end of life in the coming decades. Delivering timely, appropriate and effective palliative care is a pressing challenge highlighted by the morbidity and mortality caused by COVID-19.

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This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution IGO License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/legalcode), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In any reproduction of this article there should not be any suggestion that WHO or this article endorse any specific organization or products. The use of the WHO logo is not permitted. This notice should be preserved along with the article's original URL.

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2471/blt.20.285286

Repository URI

http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2927293