'After a decade of palliative care neglect in which New Zealand slumped by world standards, there is new hope the terminally ill may soon be suffering less', writes Kevin Norquay in Wellington's daily, The Post.
This feature tells how New Zealand’s palliative care system is finally showing signs of renewal, with hospice leaders pushing for lasting change.
There is still not enough funding to halt the slide, the fate of dying remains a topic society still doesn’t want to talk about, or place value on, there is a decline in carers, lack of training, and insufficient funding.
But there are signs of progress at last, the story continues.
After years of neglect, our quality of care ranking has fallen from third in the world in 2015, to 12th in 2021 and now 15th. Somehow the final part of the health mantra “start well, stay well, get well, die well” has gone AWOL, even if palliative care is a valuable investment that keeps people out of hospitals. In the story, Hospice New Zealand Chief Executive Wayne Naylor, says he has been lobbying, and Health Minister Simeon Brown has been listening, so the mood in the sector is more upbeat than it was six months ago.
There’s been a lot of work done to address it,” Naylor says, adding it was important successive Governments maintained the work, so that it was not constantly picked up and dropped. “We’re talking to the Minister. We’ve been talking to other MPs, the opposition and coalition partners, to say this work needs to carry on,”
“If you’re in the Government or Opposition, you need to commit because it’s about people who are dying and making sure they get good care. We’ve come so far that we can’t just have a new Government stop it.”
Health New Zealand has a National Palliative Care Work Programme under way, aiming to develop nationally consistent approaches to paediatric and adult palliative care. As well, there is the recently launched Hospice Service and Funding Review. Together they could rebuild a consistent, nationally funded system, though Naylor predicts improvements are at least a year or two away.