In Italy, out of 30,000 sick children, only 18% receive the necessary pediatric palliative care (CPP), which make it possible to improve the quality of life and to live with the disease even for long periods. It emerges from the Palliped study, presented today to the Ministry of Health, which photographs the state of the art of such treatments in our country. The study was coordinated by Franca Benini, head of the Veneto Regional Center for Pain Therapy and Pediatric Palliative Care, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, University of Padua, with the support of the Maruzza Foundation. Launched today too the Giro d’Italia of Pediatric Palliative Care 2023 with the aim of making pediatric palliative care known to all citizens. In the study, 867 pediatric patients treated in the 19 CPP facilities surveyed were considered: 90.3% were non-oncological patients. 9.7% are cancer patients. In general, 26.6% are aged between 6 and 12 years. The study lasted two years, saw the involvement of CPP networks and structures in Northern, Central and Southern Italy and was carried out by assessing the prevalence of children in charge of the services on 10/23/2022.
“In Italy, Law 38/2010 establishes that all citizens have the right to be able to access pain therapy and palliative care and sanctions the pediatric specificity. The data collected – says Benini – represent an important basis for highlighting critical issues, and stimulate new strategies”. A total of 14 regions belong to the 19 structures that participated in the study, of which 7 proved to be equipped to provide continuity of care, understood as the possibility for the child and family to have continuous answers 24 hours a day. In 5 regions there is no reference center and the structures work without coordination. The impact of the disease on the family was also examined: it emerges that 9.8% of parents are separated or divorced. Of the separated parents, 77.4% separated after the diagnosis. Some data also reveal how the disease has repercussions on the working sphere of parents. One fact in particular reveals that even when the educational qualification of the mothers is higher than that of the father, it is almost always the latter who abandon their jobs to assist the sick minor. In fact, in 90% of cases, mothers perform the function of main caregiver.
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