Hospice in Hungary

A staggering 34,000 people die of cancer in Hungary annually. Itself ailing, the national health care system has not found an efficient way to provide service for people who are incurable but need symptomatic treatment, often for a long time, to alleviate their pains and other symptoms. These patients are now cared for in expensive hospital wards whose resources are badly needed in active treatment, or in nursing wards where they suffer the lack of specialized treatment and caring company, and die bereft of human dignity.

 

More often than not, incurable patients fail to receive the necessary health care services, while their numbers present an ever more urgent problem for the health service in East Central Europe. In Hungary the legal framework was made to conform to European standards and WHO recommendations in 1997, when a new act on health service was created, which dedicates an entire chapter to patient rights, and a section to the definition of hospice treatment . The right of the dying and their families to hospice treatment and home care, however, suffers infringement under the present circumstances, because hospices are few and far between in the country. Whatever development has taken place happened without government support: hospice in Hungary is run by the civil sphere.

 

Hospice was introduced to Hungary by the Hungarian Hospice Foundation, founded by Alaine Polcz in 1991. The service, which initially meant home care given by a few volunteers, is now provided by a variety of organizations, in various forms (home care, palliative clinic, and their combination). The growing number of organizations formed the Hungarian Hospice-Palliative Society in 1995.

 

You can find the list of the Hungarian Hospices on the homepage of the Hungarian Hospice-Palliative Association: http://www.hospice.hu/en/member-organizations/