Poor care for dying children in most regions

Long Bay Beach, photo taken by Merryn Gott

"At a minimum, every child with a serious illness and their whānau, across the motu, should be receiving quality, evidence-based and compassionate generalist paediatric palliative care from their primary healthcare team."

Gemma Aburn led a recent paper published in the New Zealand Medical Journal which highlights the urgent need to improve the provision of paediatric palliative care in Aotearoa. In particular, the paper highlights that:

• Starship has the only publicly funded paediatric palliative care service in the country.

• A 12-year-old plan for a nationwide service went nowhere.

• About 350 children die of serious illnesses every year.

• The number of children with life-limiting illnesses is set to triple in the next decade.

Attention it also drawn to the size of the trained workforce, which is "staggeringly inadequate" to meet the needs of the current population of children with serious illnesses, let alone the expected increase in the future.

The authors argue that: "This means that many children and whānau are missing out on their basic right to this essential care. The consequences of this avoidable poor care for children are far reaching and must be considered unacceptable."

There is also a need to delivery and partnership with Māori health providers and iwi to ensure services meet the needs of tamariki Māori and their whānau.

Gemma is leading two projects that are starting to build a much needed evidence base to inform improvements in paediatric palliative care provision so watch this space!

Please contact Gemma for a full copy of the paper (g.aburn@auckland.ac.nz).