(Background) Where to die: that is the question

The debate about how to address the end of life care has been on the agenda for a while now, and it’s drawn even more attention recently with the case of Craig Ewert’s assisted suicide at a Swiss euthanasia clinic.

In July 2008 the Government published the End of Life Care Strategy, a massive ten year plan that aims to provide people approaching the end of life with more choice about where they would like to die and more support.

 The plan involves a training for medical staff in order to enable them to talk more comfortably about death with patients allowing them to express and make the best decisions while approaching the end of life.

The government also allocated 286 million pounds to guarantee a better palliative care by 2011.

The report from the National Audit Office, published in November 2008, has basically formally pointed out with the evidence of statistics some problematic areas that were well known by the experts.