South Asian patients: progress and challenges in palliative care

The myth that south Asian people do not get cancer and, therefore, rarely need palliative care has been forcefully challenged over the past few years. Alastair Owens and Gurch Randhawa report on the key issues facing practitioners attempting to provide care for this group Over the past ten years, there has been a growing concern to develop the provision of palliative care services in order to more effectively meet the needs of minority ethnic groups. This has been prompted by the publication of studies suggesting an under-utilisation of palliative care services by people from non-white backgrounds (Hill and Penso 1995), coupled–in the wake of the publication of the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence–with a wider desire to tackle racial inequalities in the health care arena (Gunaratnam 2000). Much progress has been made, yet many challenges remain for those who commission and manage services, and for nursing professionals who deliver them.