Universal health Coverage and Palliative Care – Don’t leave those suffering behind-this was a slogan for celebrating the World Hospice and Palliative Care Day throughout the world on October 14.

This year, our children’s hospice "Firefly World” got involved in this initiative first time, together with other countries. Inpatients,day care and home care patients and their parents were marked this day together at hospice.

Palliative care is the multi-profile care, which aims to relieve the pain of people ill with terminal diseases and to provide social and psychological aid and spiritual compassion to them. And the hospices are institutions where the people are provided with physical and moral support during the last days of their lives. Such diseases are: AIDS, cancer in the IV stage, Alzheimer, Parkinson, cardio-vascular and neurology diseases... These people are palliative patients, for whom the only thing the medicine has left is to alleviate their condition, and these are the ones who need palliative care.

There are thousands of people who need palliative care in Georgia today, but currently the little number of beds and human resources at hospices cannot meet the growing demand of patients. As the result, thousands of patients suffer from severe physical and spiritual hardship, which prevent them from continuing full-fledged and decent lives.