Eighty-two percent of European countries have increased their issue of specialized palliative care services between 2005 and 2019, but growth has been uneven between Western countries, with higher incomes, and Eastern countries, with fewer. However, in Spain, the issue of services detected has gone from 139 in 2005 to 104 in 2019. This is what emerges from a research led by the Global Observatory of Palliative Care of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, which has analyzed 51 countries, 94% of those that make up the European region of the World Health Organization.

agreement According to the study, there has been a 104% increase in home care teams, an 82% increase in hospitalization services and a 48% increase in hospital support teams. "While services all over subject have grown in higher income nations, in countries with income average only the latter have increased," says Natalia Arias-Casais, lead author of article, published in the prestigious scientific journal Palliative Medicine. 

He adds that the central European countries have improved significantly in home care and inpatient services, while in the western region they have improved significantly in hospital support and home care, the latter being the most important service.

Another relevant conclusion of the study is that the States "are far below the recommendations of the European Palliative Care association (EAPC) to have a minimum coverage, two services per 100,000 inhabitants," says Natalia Arias. "This is important because in the region every year 5 million people die without access to palliative care, of which 180,000 are children," she laments.

Countries with no services detected

Thus, the ratio in Spain has fallen from 0.32 to 0.22, approximately one tenth of what the EAPC recommends. The countries at the top of the list are Monaco (2.58), Lithuania (1.38) and Sweden (1.19), while in some countries such as Turkey and Montenegro the need for palliative care continues to increase. 

Finally, the researcher concludes that these data "force us to rethink whether what is really necessary is to implement new specialized services or to integrate them into other areas of health systems, such as primary care, and through the training in this discipline of all health professionals during the programs of Degree".

Along with Natalia Arias-Casais, the article is signed by ICS researchers Jesús López Fidalgo, Eduardo Garralda and Carlos Centeno; Juan José Pons, from the School of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Navarra; John Rhee, from the School Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, USA); Lukas Radbruch, from Bonn University Hospital (Germany); and Liliana Lima, from the International Association of Hospice and Palliative Care Centers (IAHPC). UU.); Lukas Radbruch, from the University Hospital of Bonn (Germany); and Liliana de Lima, from the association International Association of Hospice and Palliative Care Centers (IAHPC).

The article in 'Palliative Medicine'.