Hospice Awareness Week highlights the need for services

university-of-canterbury

Mon May 13 2013 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Hospice Awareness Week highlights the need for services

Monday, 13 May 2013, 12:05 pm
Press Release: University of Canterbury

Hospice Awareness Week highlights the need for services, UC expert says

May 13, 2013

It costs Hospice New Zealand about $75 million a year to deliver its services to 34 hospices and $30 million of that comes from the community.

This week is Hospice Awareness Week and University of Canterbury (UC) health sciences and palliative care researcher Kate Reid says the majority of the hospice work is out in the community with over 155,000 visits made to people in their homes in 2011.

"Hospice services are being needed more every year. About 29,000 people die annually and the number of deaths will rise rapidly in the years ahead due to an ageing population.

"More people will need to use hospice/palliative care services to assist them when dying and many more people will have family or friends needing hospice/palliative care services.

"Hospice Awareness Week is a time to think about what matters most to those closest. Hospice is about supporting loved ones through that dying time.

"UC has a group of hospice and palliative care health science professionals and a number of academics researching this area. People need to think about life and death so that, as a society, we can remove the mystery and fear and make the most of living every moment," Reid says.

Reid has produced the first study in New Zealand assessing the palliative care needs of Asian migrants. Palliative care is a major issue as, in the next 15 years, the New Zealand population is expected to increase by almost 20 percent.

ENDS

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