United Kingdom end-of-life care ‘best in the world’

Australia was placed at the second spot for the best palliative care, followed by New Zealand.

The rankings are based on hospital and hospice environments, the number of staff and how well-trained they are, the affordability of end-of-life care and the public’s involvement in palliative care. But a few poorer nations are bucking the trend, and it’s often down to the efforts of individuals campaigning for everyone to be allowed a dignified and pain-free death.

Taking a look at India and China (ranked 67th and 71st respectively), the researchers hypothesized why their system was failing, and what it could mean for the two countries. Bottom of the ranking came Iraq and Bangladesh, while China was in the worst ten. Their performances were concerning due to the huge population sizes. It got an overall score of 93.9 on 100 but there was still room for improvement as per the report.

It cites an “extensive integration of palliative care into its National Health Service, and a strong hospice movement” as the reason for the UK’s success.

The upper echelons of the index are dominated by wealthy European, Asia-Pacific and north American countries. New national guidelines on end-of-life care were also unveiled past year.

Annie Pannelay, author of the new report, said: “The United Kingdom is an acknowledged leader in palliative care”. When Davaasuren set up the Mongolian Palliative Care Society (MPCS) in 2000, the country had no hospices or palliative care teaching programs.

In response to the report, Marie Curie’s director of policy and public affairs Simon Jones warned the UK’s top position in the list should not detract from the many improvements still required.

Taiwan is the leader among Asian territories and Singapore, second. The government needs to do more in the way of providing palliative care in rural counties, he added. What is quite disheartening is that only 34 of the 80 countries assessed provided commendable care that could be classified as a good end-of-life care.

Dr Stephen Connor, of the the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance, said: “The biggest problem that persists is that our healthcare systems are created to provide acute care when what we need is chronic care”.

“But we are determined to go even further and are clear that doctors and nurses must always involve patients and families in decisions about their care, regularly review their treatment and make sure patients’ wishes are respected”.

The 2015 Quality of Death Index was commissioned by the Singaporean Lien Foundation charity, and is an update on research first released in 2010 on 40 countries.