About Us
World Day
People living in humanitarian crisis
The content and key messages on this page have been developed in collaboration with clinicians, campaigners, people accessing palliative care, and their caregivers. You can use this content in your social media and as part of your World Hospice and Palliative Care Day activities.
People living in humanitarian crisis
· Relieve human suffering: The most fundamental goal not only of palliative care, but also of medicine itself, including medicine practiced in humanitarian emergencies and crises, is to relieve human suffering. Saving lives is a crucial way to achieve this goal but not the only way.
· Palliative care and symptom control: Humanitarian responses to emergencies and crises should include palliative care and symptom control. There is an ethical and medical imperative to include palliative care in humanitarian responses.
· “Regards dying as a normal process” and never intends to “postpone death”
. In humanitarian emergencies and crises, the statements that palliative care “regards dying as a normal process” and never intends to “postpone death”, as in the 2002 WHO definition, require additional clarification. In this setting, clinicians should provide care aimed at saving life, while also providing appropriate treatment for pain, symptoms and other sources of suffering. Palliative care never intentionally hastens death but provides whatever treatment is necessary to achieve an adequate level of comfort for the patient in the context of the patient’s values.