Medicine has transformed lives by preventing disease, extending life and restoring health. Yet death remains an unavoidable part of life. A healthcare system should therefore be judged not only by the lives it saves, but also by how it cares for those it cannot cure.
The World Health Organization estimates that 56.8 million people need palliative care each year, but only about 14 per cent receive it. In Africa, access is even more limited, with fewer than five per cent of patients receiving the care they need despite the growing burden of cancer and other chronic illnesses.
These figures raise an important question: Why does palliative care matter?
Palliative care focuses on relieving pain, controlling symptoms, and providing emotional, psychosocial and spiritual support to people with life-limiting illnesses and their families. It seeks to preserve dignity and improve quality of life rather than prolong suffering.
As Rwanda strengthens one of Africa's most respected healthcare systems, expanding access to palliative care should become a national priority. With rising cases of cancer, heart disease, kidney failure and other non-communicable diseases, more families are facing prolonged illness that brings physical pain, emotional distress and financial hardship.
Death is not the failure of medicine. There comes a point when treatment can no longer cure disease. At that stage, the responsibility of healthcare shifts from curing to caring.
Palliative care recognises that while medicine cannot always add years to life, it can add comfort, dignity and peace to the time that remains. No one should spend their final days in severe pain or without compassionate support.
Behind every diagnosis is a human story: a parent worried about the future of their children, an elderly patient living with uncontrolled pain, or a child whose greatest comfort is being surrounded by family rather than medical equipment. These are not simply clinical cases but people whose dignity deserves protection until the very end.
Rwanda has made remarkable progress through universal health coverage, community health workers and expanded access to essential health services. However, quality palliative care remains limited, particularly in rural communities where specialist services and pain management are often unavailable.
Community-based palliative care can help patients remain close to their families while receiving appropriate medical, psychological and spiritual support. It also reflects Rwanda's longstanding values of family care, solidarity and compassion.
Across Africa, progress remains constrained by shortages of trained professionals, limited access to essential medicines such as morphine, inadequate financing and the misconception that palliative care means giving up hope.
It does not.
Palliative care is about refusing unnecessary suffering. It ensures that people continue to receive compassionate, person-centred care even when cure is no longer possible.
To close this gap, Rwanda and other African countries should integrate palliative care into national health policies, train more healthcare workers, guarantee the availability of essential pain medicines, expand home-based care, increase public awareness and monitor progress through measurable national indicators.
The final chapter of life deserves the same compassion and professionalism as every other stage of healthcare. A peaceful death, free from avoidable pain and abandonment, should not be a privilege but a basic human right.
Rwanda has demonstrated what determined leadership can achieve in public health. It now has an opportunity to lead again by ensuring that every person, regardless of age, income or diagnosis, can approach the end of life with dignity, comfort and hope.
The writer, Rutsobe Nsengiyumva, holds a Master’s Degree in Public Health from Walden University, Minnesota.