A new report on global palliative care has named India as one of the worst places to die and Britain the best. The report also notified Kerala as a ‘beacon of hope’ for being the only Indian state to have a formal policy on palliative care services. The report from the Economic Intelligence Unit, titled ‘The quality of death: Ranking end-of-life care across the world’, ranks India at number 40 in its ‘Quality of Death Index’ that measures the current environment for end-of-life care services in 40 countries.
The report says that with the exception of Kerala, India has little government funding for end-of-life care. According to the report, in India less than 1% is spent on healthcare so it’s not only palliative care that suffers. There is no public funding, there is no socialised medicine and the same holds true for palliative care.
While India ranks at the bottom of the Index in overall score, and performs badly on many indicators, Kerala, if measured on the same points, would buck the trend. With only 3% of India’s population, the tiny state provides two-thirds of India’s palliative care services.
Quality of Death Index : Top Five
- UK
- Australia
- New Zelanad
- Ireland
- Belgium
Quality of Death Index : Bottom Five
- Mexico
- China
- brazil
- Uganda
- India (40th rank out of 40 countries)
