Palliative care in humanitarian crises: always something to offer

More than 128·6 million people across 33 countries require life-saving humanitarian assistance, 92·8 million of whom are particularly vulnerable.1 Palliative care, however, has been omitted from efforts to tackle humanitarian crises.2 Palliative care is, according to WHO, “an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering”.3 We propose holistic palliative care as an integral component of relief strategies. [...]in communicable disease outbreaks with high mortality and limited therapeutic interventions where relief of suffering can be the main treatment option available (eg, Ebola virus disease). [...]during the outbreak of Ebola virus disease, it has been argued that palliative and supportive measures were essential care elements that could have been systematically implemented.10 But in the absence of palliative care specialists, some overburdened health-care providers struggled to care for patients with the disease and expressed frustration at feeling forced “to turn our treatment facilities into palliative care facilities”.11 The standard humanitarian response of saving lives to minimise suffering should be re-imagined to encompass both saving lives and minimising suffering. 6 MC Bhalla, J Frey, C Rider, M Nord, M Hegerhorst, Simple Triage Algorithm and Rapid Treatment and Sort, Assess, Lifesaving, Interventions, Treatment, and Transportation mass casualty triage methods for sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values, Am J Emerg Med, Vol. 33, 2015, 1687-1691 7 K Mackway-Jones, Major incident medical management and support: the practical approach at the scene, 3rd edn., 2012, Blackwell, London 8 A Goodman,...