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Important advance for incurably ill in Mexico

10-Dec-14, Human Rights Watch

The Mexican Health Ministry took an important step on December 09, 2014, to ensure access to palliative care for people suffering from pain due to incurable illness, Human Rights Watch said today. The government released long-awaited guidelines to its healthcare system that will operationalize provisions on end-of-life care outlined in Mexico’s 2009 health law.

“The publication of these guidelines is an important step toward ensuring that people who are dying in Mexico not only have a right to care in theory but also in practice,” said Diederik Lohman, associate health director at Human Rights Watch. “Now Mexico’s progressive law can finally be put into operation.”

The Human Rights Watch report found that, in practice, the availability of palliative care is uneven and limited throughout the country. Seven of Mexico’s 32 states did not have a single hospital that offered palliative care and in another 17 states, palliative care services only existed in capital cities.

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