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Palliative care needs may be present in up to 40% of patients in hospitals in Africa, but it is reported that few patients are receiving any palliative care, although the WHO call for integration of palliative care in all health service settings.1 We therefore conducted a census in a large rural hospital in Kenya managed by the Presbyterian Church of East Africa to identify what percentage of patients might benefit from palliative care, their diagnoses and what percentage were actually receiving palliative care at the time. A resident doctor at a large faith-based hospital in Kenya on 9 November 2022 reviewed the electronic medical records of all the patients in the medical and surgical wards on that day using the Supportive and Palliative care Indicator Tool adapted to low income settings (SPICT-LIS) to identify patients who would benefit from a palliative care approach.2
First the patient’s medical history was cross-checked against six ‘general indicators’ of poor or deteriorating health. See copy of SPICT-LIS in online supplemental annex 1 or at www.spict.org.uk/spict-lis/. Then patients who had one of the general indicators were categorised according to their medical diagnoses into one or more 10 ‘clinical indicator groups’. Finally we also examined the medical notes to identify if there was any mention of a palliative care approach in their care. These included …
Footnotes
Contributors LMK and SAM designed the study, and LMK collected the data. All authors contributed to the analysis of the data and contributed to and approved the final draft.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
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