Challenges and Future Directions of Palliative Care

The unprecedented global development of palliative care over the past 50 years, originating in a counterculture and evolving through to an integral element of the health-care system, has enabled many more of the world’s population to have access to quality palliative care. More of the world’s population, particularly those living in high-income countries, such as Europe, North America, Australia, and parts of Asia, now die at an older age of, or with, noncommunicable diseases. The need for palliative care is also significant and largely unmet in low- and middle-income countries such as sub-Saharan Africa where communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria continue to lead to expected deaths for many people.These new patterns of dying have implications for the configuration of international, national, and local palliative care policies, health-care service delivery models, palliative care delivery, engagement with primary and specialist clinical streams, workforce education, and the focus of future research.This chapter will describe the current and future challenges to palliative care development in low-, middle-, and high-income countries and the opportunities offered by adopting a public health approach, novel technologies, and remote monitoring and better engaging communities to increase palliative care access globally