Access to palliative care indicator has been agreed as part of the Global Monitoring and Evaluation Framework on Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Geneva.
The agreed indicator is, “Morphine equivalent consumption of strong opioid analgesics (excluding methadone) per death from cancer”.
This followed a three day consultation meeting of member states from around the world to agree the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.
China initially requested the deletion of the palliative care indicator, member states including the UK, South Africa, Uganda, Australia, Canada, Cuba, Panama, the USA and Brazil showed strong support for the retention of ‘access to palliative care’ as a core indicator.
The UK was the only country that requested a change of the indicator from ‘per cancer deaths’ to ‘per capita’ while other countries, such as India and Panama, requested a change from ‘per cancer deaths’ to ‘deaths by non-communicable or chronic diseases’.
Many palliative care organisations and advocates have worked hard to keep palliative care on the NCDs agenda and this is a really important step forward in highlighting palliative care as a key part of the global health response.
Global palliative care advocates who have been engaged with this issue since the first civil society consultation meeting include Stephen Connor, Diederik Lohmann, Jim Cleary and Liliana De Lima.
The existence of this indicator will hopefully be another tool for national advocates to draw on when engaging their governments on issues of improved access to palliative care. It will also be a tool at the global level to hold governments and the UN to account on the progress that is being made on addressing pain and suffering for people living with non-communicable diseases.
For a more information on the outcome of the meeting, read the international edition article titled First global monitoring framework on non-communicable diseases includes palliative care.
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