A Man is mortal, and it’s inevitable that each one of us will die one day. For the majority of us, the goal is to live as long as possible and then die peacefully. Advancements in the world of medicine have made living a long life much easier than before; but, for people living in most parts of the world, dying well or having a dignified death is still a challenge. However, a new report is suggesting that there are some places on this planet where you can die well, and the United Kingdom tops the list of those places.
The said report is from the Economist and has been titled as the Quality of Death Index. It has ranked nations based on the quality of hospice and palliative care they provide.
As motioned above, the UK is right on top of the list. Some other countries to make the top ten are the United States, Belgium, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium and Netherlands, each of which is a wealthy nation of the west. The non-western countries making the top 10 are New Zealand, Australia and Taiwan. Canada is the 11th country on the list.
The report also includes a list of the worst places to die. Some of the nations finding a place in that list are India, Mexico, China, Uganda and Brazil. Here, it must be mentioned that these countries are not the only ones to showcase bad performance in this department. In most parts of the world, the standard of palliative care is destitute.
Out of the 80 nations named in this recently released index, just 34 have above average systems in place for providing palliative care to terminally ill patients or individuals on their death bed. Right now, around 85% of the global population is living without any access to proper palliative care.
There’s enough room for improvement even for the nations, which according to the report allow people to die well. For instance, the report has praised the US for having a transparent palliative care system but said that the country’s end-of-life care is understaffed and unaffordable. According to numbers put up by the report, right now for every 1,200 terminally ill individuals in the US, there’s just one palliative medicine physician.
