Palliative care: the dying of the light

September 14, 2010

We may disagree about whether a sick or incapacitated person should be helped to end their life if they wish to die, but at least the subject is no longer taboo. Yet most of the half a million people who will die in Britain this year will not fade away painlessly as they sleep in their beds. Fifty-five percent of us die in hospital, 17% in a care home and only a fifth in our own homes. That first percentage, as the Department of Health’s End of Life Care Strategy noted a few weeks ago, is falling very slowly. It must fall further if people are to have more say in the manner and place in which they die. (The Guardian)