Author: Joan Marston
Today is World Human Rights Day with the theme: Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now. On this day, global palliative care advocate, Joan Marston, writes:
For every child with serious health-related suffering – Palliative Care is a Human Right.
Palliative care for children to relieve serious health-related suffering is recognised as a human right. Included in the Declaration of Astana in 2018 that established palliative care as part of Primary Health Care; the World Health Assembly Resolution 67:19 of 2014 which called for a global strengthening of access to palliative care; part of Universal Health Coverage, and the Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief 2018, which estimate that as little as $2.16 per capita per year would provide palliative care for most who needed it in low and middle-income countries, very few children receive palliative care. – only 3% of those who need it according to the Global Atlas for Palliative Care 2nd Edition.
In South Africa, an estimated 800 000 – 1000 000 children would benefit from palliative care; yet despite advocacy, government recognition, education and a few excellent children’s palliative care programmes, there is presently no government budget to provide this. The responsibility of funding and implementing an essential service should not only be the responsibility of NGOs.
Why should children suffer when we have the knowledge, skilled and compassionate practitioners, easy access to education, medications and therapies and a strong national association, PatchSA, to relieve
their suffering? If palliative care is a human right- are our children in South Africa not human enough to receive it?
On World Human Rights Day can we join our voices to turn from words to action. So that South Africa’s children can say Our Rights; Our Future; Right Now!
About the author
Joan Marston is the founder of Sunflower Housce Children’s Hospice in Bloemfontain. She also co-founded PallCHASE – Palliative Care in Humanitarian Aid Situations and Emergencies – and is on the Executive Committee leading on Advocacy. As the Vice-President of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation Global Joan co-facilitates the EKRF South-Asian Fellowship programme. Joan teaches across a number of countries; and is an Honorary Consultant to the Center of Palliative Medicine at the Kharkiv National Medical University in Ukraine. She is a Global Ambassador for the ICPCN; on the faculty of a number of international educational programmes; and still involved with Sunflower Children’s Hospice.