Universal healthcare is a sacrosanct ideal with foundational principles. Health care is a human right which carries through the entirety of one’s life. Historically, societies that were known to honour and respect death through spiritual ceremony, were deemed to be more advanced, yet somehow in 21st-century Newfoundland and Labrador we have abandoned those ideals within our health-care system.
Our province holds the embarrassing distinction of being the only province without a residential hospice as part of its end of life care strategy; the only province without an end of life strategy to begin with.
There are approximately 100 residential hospices throughout Canada operating under funding models including public-private partnerships. Those jurisdictions have recognized a deficiency in end of life care and seen residential hospice as a significant component of addressing it. Successive governments have failed to address this important issue while individuals die in homes without proper supports, in acute care beds or emergency departments. Often, they are surrounded by loved ones sitting in lawn chairs. This is not to cast aspersions on care providers who do wonderful work, but we ask them to do so in the wrong environment.
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https://www.thetelegram.com/opinion/letter-to-the-editor/letter-end-of-life-care-is-an-issue-for-everyone-292444/