ABSTRACT
In 2006, National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) and Help the Hospices commissioned the International Observatory for End-of-Life Care to conduct an analysis of palliative care development worldwide. Results from the study found that only half the world's countries have any direct provision of palliative care. For palliative care to be integrated into a country's health care system, there needs to be a number of significant structures in place. The International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care and The World Health Organization have defined essential palliative care medications to include drugs from the following classes: It does little good to provide opioids and other essential medications if there are no health care professionals trained to prescribe them. Palliative care is still a new discipline in most of the world and there is still a lack of universally recognized curricula for the interdisciplinary professions.
