Palliative care is a right

The Pontifical Academy for Life organized an online webinar from 9 to 11 February 2022 as a part of project to improve the dissemination of palliative care in the world. I would like to point out to some of thoughts on palliative care:

"We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate any form of suicide. I would point out that the right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritised, so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never discarded. Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered. And this ethical principle applies to concerns everyone, not just Christians or believers." (https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2022/02/09/220209a.html) 

Archbishop Paglia spoke of how palliative care "Talking about palliative care,” he said, “does not mean talking about a dimension of care offered when there is nothing more to do. It means accompanying a sick person in the last time before his or her death, so that he or she may receive all possible clinical, human, psychological and spiritual care and assistance... No one should be left alone in one of the most difficult moments or times of their life,” Paglia said, and for believers, it includes an extra spiritual dimension in that death is not the end but a passage. (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2022-02/pontifical-academy-life-paglia-palliative-care-webinar.html)

Echoing the Pope’s words he said: “We are against suicide absolutely. Killing should be avoided but therapeutic overkill should also be avoided. What these two dimensions have in common is the power over death: either hasten it or delay it. In between” he stressed, “there is accompaniment.” The Archbishop concluded noting the increasing urgency of end-of-life care in an aging world and said Catholic Universities have an important role to play in formation, “in raising awareness of this perspective of what palliative care means: accompaniment at the highest level, clinical, cultural, spiritual and social.” (https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2022-02/pontifical-academy-life-paglia-palliative-care-webinar.html)