Children’s Palliative Care in Europe is ‘far below what is needed’

The European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) has launched a new edition of the Atlas of Palliative Care in the European Region 2025 – mapping the state of palliative care across Europe against the elements of the WHO ‘House’ model. The release of the Atlas coincided with European Palliative Care Day 2025, marked this year under the theme “Equitable and Accessible Palliative Care for All”.  The report and campaign together issued a clear call to action: that access to pain relief and quality care should not depend on geography, wealth, diagnosis, or age.

A specific section on children’s palliative care (pp 74-78) shows that there are 524 services in 41 of the 56 European countries (up from 38 countries in 2019).  Whilst a welcome increase, it does indicate that children and families in 27% of European countries still do not have access to CPC services.

“The European Atlas also shows modest but meaningful progress in the development of paediatric palliative care. In 2025, 41 countries now offer some form of palliative services for children, an improvement from 38 in 2019. Nevertheless, the authors stress that availability remains far below what is needed to meet the needs of vulnerable young people and their families.”

These paediatric palliative care services range from isolated services — as seen in Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Slovenia, and Uzbekistan — to countries where such provision is more widespread, with a reasonable number of specialised teams, for example in Poland, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom

Only ten countries reported a level of advanced integration of PPC meaning that specialised palliative care services or teams for children are systematically provided across the country. These countries include Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia.

In terms of broader palliative care, the Atlas highlighted a stark disparity in different countries of Europe relating to the  availability, quality, and development of services, for example:

• Only 15 countries have integrated palliative care into all medical schools’ curricula.
• Access to Medicines: While 83% of Western European countries provide broad access to oral morphine, this drops to 30% of countries in central and Eastern Europe.
• Legal recognition: Only 9 countries have introduced palliative care legislation.
• Service provision: The number of specialised palliative care services has grown by 10% since 2019, yet major regional disparities remain.

The EAPC Atlas of Palliative Care in the European Region 2025 was officially launched on Thursday, 29 May, at the 19th EAPC Congress in Helsinki.

For more information, visit the official EAPC website: The EAPC Atlas of Palliative Care in the European Region 2025 – EAPC

ICPCN is currently undertaking a dedicated mapping survey of children’s palliative care for 2025 and will share the results of this later in the year.