Thursday, 23rd August 2018
A report handed down today by the WA Parliament’s End of Life Choices committee has recommended increasing palliative care options in regional WA after evidence showed a severe lack of health services for West Australian’s suffering from a terminal illness.
Greens MP Robin Chapple, a long-time advocate for end of life choices, welcomed the report’s findings.
“This report recommends that palliative care in regional WA is adequately funded to meet demand, and that is something that I am glad to see endorsed by this committee. The Greens are calling for proper funding for these services that are so clearly lacking in regional WA.
“Western Australia has the lowest number of publicly funded inpatient palliative care beds per head of population. This is reflected in regional WA by people having to relocate their families or travel hundreds of kilometres to access underfunded services as they reach the end of their lives.
“Fundamentally, this is about compassion and caring for people with a terminal illness.
“Many people have to relocate their entire family into towns and cities just to get the medical treatment they need. This is not sustainable, and people in regional WA deserve better. They deserve proper services, and The Greens are backing them up.
“This problem is even worse for remote areas, where staying on country at the end of one’s life becomes extremely hard as the nearest services can be hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres away.
“What this report shows is that there is limited access to palliative care medical specialists across WA, but particularly so in regional areas.”
Media contact: Liam Carter – 0449 151 490
