Global palliative care: from need to action

Abstract

Katherine Sleeman and colleagues report the first worldwide projection of the future global burden of serious health-related suffering. The calculation followed the methods used by the Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief assessing global palliative care need. Combining these methods with WHO’s revised global and regional projections of mortality up to 2060,3 the authors estimate the global burden of serious health-related suffering requiring palliative care by world regions and age groups for 20 health conditions. The vision of the future delivered by this Article is alarming: “By 2060, an estimated 48 million people (47% of all deaths globally) will die each year with serious healthrelated suffering, and 83% of these deaths will occur in low-income and middle-income countries”.1 These numbers indicate that 130000 people worldwide will die every day with serious health-related suffering by 2060, the equivalent to twice the size of a Super Bowl stadium. The real burden of serious health-related suffering is even greater because the authors’ calculations are based on mortality data and do not include the burden of people living with serious health-related suffering who do not die in a given period.