Now, there are concerns dying children are not getting the end-of-life care they deserve, RNZ reported yesterday.
This is because the country’s only publicly funded paediatric palliative care specialist is on extended leave.
Starship children’s hospital told its senior doctors in February the sole specialist would be unavailable for two months until April. No replacement has been found.
“The current situation is untenable, inequitable and inadequate,” Children’s Commissioner Dr Claire Achmad told RNZ.
Achmad’s comments are an understatement. Our health system is so poorly resourced that one specialist goes on leave and the cracks immediately appear.
How did it get to such a dire state? The truth is many parts of our health system, including children’s palliative care, have been underfunded and neglected for decades.
A report by Unheard Cries estimated about 3000 children a year need palliative care in New Zealand.
But horrifically, 75% do not receive it because they do not live in Auckland. This lack of appropriate care adds to the trauma those families with a dying child are experiencing.
The Unheard Cries report estimated a nationwide palliative care service would cost $8 million a year to run. It is also estimated it would save $22m in fewer hospital admissions.
Why have successive governments not already funded this?
RNZ reported that Starship management had asked general paediatricians to temporarily fill the role.
But, understandably, they were reluctant without undergoing specialist training, which is said to require years.
Clinicians, meanwhile, have instead been directed to follow the hospital’s palliative care guidelines while children are given medications for managing pain.
Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, have paediatric palliative care as part of their system.
We should be comparing our level of healthcare to countries like the UK. Instead, a recent Auckland University study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal found dying children were missing out on the “basic right” to end-of-life care.
The study also said Starship’s palliative care team was “small and vulnerable to workforce pressures”.
It was a team of one.
Health Minister Simeon Brown said there was an ongoing review of a national paediatric palliative care service.
Brown already has a lot of work to do across the entire system, but this substandard level of care simply cannot continue in a country like New Zealand.
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