Cultural Challenges in Implementing Palliative Care Services In Iraq

Abstract

Culturally compatible palliative care presupposes understanding of that culture’s perspectives Special Edition 1 of cancer and death. Iraq is a culturally diverse country with different perspectives towards Article Ref. #: 1000PMHCOJSE1105 cancer and death. The concept of palliative care among Iraqi people and patients is primitive; the majority of them have no idea what palliative care is about. As long as there is no national Article History palliative care program – most of the medical health care providers themselves are also not Received: March 24th, 2017 familiar with palliative care – it is not more than a terminology they had read about during Accepted: May 12th, 2017 under- and postgraduate course if this ever happened. The strength of the palliative care field in Published: May 18th, 2017 this country lies in the area of culture, religion and psychosocial entities. Yet, negative impacts also exist in the same culture. Health care in Iraq has witnessed remarkable regression in the last three decades parallel with political and economic troubles, struggling to provide basic di- Citation agnostic and therapeutic facilities. Hence, the idea of palliative care seems to be ‘’luxurious’’ in Ghali HH. Cultural challenges in imple- these bad circumstances. Those in power and decision makers may think in this way: ‘’budget menting palliative care services in Iraq. Palliat Med Hosp Care Open J. 2017; from Ministry of Health or from NGOs is to be spent on buying essential medicine rather than SE(1): S19-S23. improving the quality of life (QoL) or decreasing the suffering of patients’’. Community aware- ness is very important and even within the medical community palliative care terminology is still embryonic and limited to part of the oncology medicine.