Palliative Care: A Future Challenge for the Cuban Health System

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.10.2.0230
• Pages: 230-237
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Author: Karen Valdés Álvarez,Stephen Wilkinson
• Subject Matter: hospice,palliative care,palliative attention,aging population

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 10.2 WInter 2018

ACADEMIC ARTICLE

PALLIATIVE CARE: A FUTURE CHALLENGE

FOR THE CUBAN HEALTH SYSTEM

Karen Valdés Álvarez1

Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras, Havana

Abstract

Palliative care proposes multidimensional attention to the needs of patients with

advanced or terminal illness, as well as their families. This group of patients include

those with oncological diseases, progressive chronic illnesses as a result of organic

insufficiencies and geriatric patients with multiple conditions. In developed countries,

it is estimated that 60 per cent of the population will die from one of these causes

and therefore require special care. The countries of Latin America are not far from this

problem; Cuba among them, with 19 per cent of the population aged 60 years or older,

a death rate from non-communicable chronic diseases of 712.4 deaths per 100,000

inhabitants and where malignant tumours already occupy the first cause of mortality.

This article argues that despite having a public health system that covers 100 per cent

of the population and recognition by administrative structures and decision-makers of

the need to plan strategies to face these challenges, these efforts are insufficient. The

development of palliative care in Cuba is not only a new challenge but also a moral and

material need, inherent to truly social medicine.

Keywords: hospice, palliative care, palliative attention, aging population

Introduction

It can be said that all sicknesses are essentially social. Sicknesses are always

complex phenomena that function as subsystems, at the centre of which is the ill

individual in permanent interaction with the environment, the society in which

he or she lives, his or her family and the health personnel who assist them. In

turn, each subsystem is part of another more comprehensive system, with a

greater number of elements and variables that interact and modify it. With the