Author: Gilbert Kipkemboi, Clinical Officer and Palliative & Hospice Care Specialist, Kenya
When emergencies strike, be it pandemics, natural disasters or conflict, the world’s attention is often (and rightly) drawn to saving lives. But as a clinical officer and palliative and hospice care specialist practicing in Kenya, I’ve come to realize that saving lives and relieving suffering are not mutually exclusive goals. In fact, failing to integrate palliative care into emergency preparedness and broader health systems is a quiet crisis in itself, one that costs dignity, humanity, and lives.
At the 78th World Health Assembly (WHA78), the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC), alongside global voices like the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA) and SIOP, made bold, urgent calls for palliative care integration across global health priorities, from universal health coverage (UHC) to health workforce protection to emergency preparedness. As I read the statements, I felt seen. I felt heard. And I felt compelled to echo that call from the frontlines of care.
Why Palliative Care Cannot Wait
Palliative care isn’t just for the final days of life. It’s a human right. It’s pain relief for a child dying of cancer in a refugee camp. It’s emotional support for a mother watching her baby struggle with a terminal condition. It’s dignity for an elderly man gasping for breath in a rural health facility during a disease outbreak.
When health workers are untrained, under-resourced, or unsupported, their moral distress is immense. We’ve seen this across continents, and it was only magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Without the tools to offer compassionate, ethical care, many burn out. Some leave the profession. Systems collapse quietly, not from disease alone, but from disconnection, from the very values that define healthcare: compassion, dignity, equity.
A Blueprint for Resilience
What WHA78 laid out is not just a series of recommendations, it is a blueprint for global health resilience.
- Train health workers in basic palliative care before emergencies strike.
- Audit essential medicine stockpiles, including opioids like morphine and midazolam.
- Embed palliative care into primary health care systems and community-led models, such as the Neighborhood Network in Palliative Care.
- Support vulnerable populations like women, children, persons with disabilities, older persons, and young caregivers.
These are not luxuries; they are lifelines.
A Call from the Frontlines
I write this not just as a clinician, but as someone who has held the hands of patients when curative options were no longer possible, only the need for relief, for peace, for presence remained. I’ve seen what happens when we get it right. I’ve seen what happens when we don’t.
We cannot continue to build health systems that excel at intervention but fail at compassion. We must invest in care that heals even when it cannot cure. Because the measure of a health system is not only in how many lives it saves, but in how it treats those it cannot.
Join the Movement
PALLCHASE and its partners are advancing this agenda across humanitarian settings, policy platforms, and academic spaces. Whether you’re a policymaker, practitioner, student, or advocate—there’s a role for you in this movement.
Let us not wait for the next pandemic, the next earthquake, the next crisis. Let us prepare now, to respond not only with medicines and machines but with compassion and care.
Because every life matters, and every death deserves dignity.
About the author
Gilbert Kipkemboi is a Clinical Officer and Palliative & Hospice Care Specialist practicing in Kenya. He is passionate about improving quality of life through compassionate care in humanitarian and low-resource settings. He has authored multiple articles for PALLCHASE, including “Closing the Access Abyss in Palliative Care: A Global Imperative” and “The Essential Role of Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crises.
Image: Shalom City Refugee Camp Kenya, 2009,
MothersFightingForOthers (Flickr) Creative Commons license
