Palliative Care is a Human Right

Across the world, millions endure pain that could be eased — pain that medicine already knows how to relieve. The knowledge exists. The drugs exist. Yet most people still have no access to care that could bring comfort during illness and at the end of life. Seventy-six percent of the world’s morphine is consumed in only six countries — not because the rest cannot obtain it, but because laws and systems stand in the way. The families of terminally ill patients face an enormous struggle, striving to provide dignity, care, and quality of life in their loved one’s final days.

This photographic series (2008–2009) was created in collaboration with the Pain Relief and Palliative Care Unit at Aretaeio Hospital in Athens, within the Department of Anaesthesiology. This project was created to highlight the work of the Pain Relief and Palliative Care Unit and to raise awareness of a simple truth: that no one should have to live — or die — in pain.