Palliative care guidelines for the management of HIV-infected people in South Africa.

Abstract

What is palliative care? Definition 1. According to the National Policy Framework and Strategy Policy on Palliative Care, Department of Health, South Africa, 2017–2022: Palliative care is a multidisciplinary approach to the holistic care and support of patients and families facing a life-threatening illness. Its aim is to improve quality of life while maintaining dignity from diagnosis to death. For children, the spectrum of illness includes life-limiting conditions that may progress to death or may be severely disabling. Palliative care should be available to all patients as needed, from birth until death, and should be accessible at all levels of the health care service. Palliative care cuts across all health programmes in the delivery of services.1 The care of the dying is as old as the practice of medicine itself (see Box 1). BOX 1 What is medicine?79