Chatham House Meeting – a possible game changer for the future
Pallium India had the opportunity to be part of a very important discussion, organised by the British Government in collaboration with the World Health Organization, at the Chatham House, London. The eventual outcomes, one would hope, would be as historic as the setting of the meeting.
Please read Ms Katherine Pettus’ blog on it, in Global Palliative Care Forum: Universal Health Coverage: palliative care’s brass ring
The purpose of the meeting was to go into the global access to palliative care abyss and to seek solutions.
A rich discussion from some of the keenest minds in the healthcare and palliative care fields led to several suggestions for improving access to palliative care.
How would you grapple with the fact that all that is mentioned as part of Universal Health Coverage would still fail to apply to the huge percentage of human population that has no access to healthcare at all?
And how would you ever overcome the therapeutic obstinacy of a growing percentage of doctors who believe that they have a duty to prolong life at all costs, even if that only adds to suffering, by prolonging the dying process at a time when existence itself is intolerably and brutally painful?
We shall have to wait a little, not only for an official report on the Chatham House meeting to emerge; but even more importantly, for some of the action steps that are likely to follow this meeting.
Image courtesy: https://www.chathamhouse.org/
Comments are closed.
