Citation

Coghlan R, Smith J, Alser O. Lancet 2024; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00014-X

PMID

38242145

Abstract

In a 2023 Correspondence, global palliative care professionals made cursory reference to Israel's violence in Palestine to advocate for access to morphine and other palliative medicines in situations of extreme violence and armed conflict. The importance of palliative care as a component of humanitarian health response, inclusive of pain relief, should not be underestimated. However, as humanitarian health and palliative care professionals, we caution against isolated calls that fail to name and advocate for an end to the violence that renders palliative care necessary for a substantial proportion of people in armed conflict.

In Gaza, during escalations in Israeli aggression and clearly illustrated in the current crisis, most palliative care needs are the direct consequence of life-threatening injuries sustained after Israeli military violence, coupled with the intentional decimation of the health-care system and the blatant denial of life-sustaining assistance. The decision to provide palliative care for many Palestinians is rarely--if ever--biomedically determined at the limits of comprehensive health-care provision. Rather, the threshold for palliative care is dynamic and politically determined by the Israeli state's impunity to its international legal obligations as related to the right to health as an occupying power.

The priority for "our collective social conscience" is not simply the provision of morphine. Depoliticised and decontextualised positioning fails to recognise the roots of illness-related suffering, and risks causing more harm than benefit. A narrow focus on pain relief also ignores aspects of holistic palliative care delivered every day by courageous health-care workers, when the odds of survival are stacked against them...

Language: en