key: cord-0941648-a3jify5q
authors: Hafi, Bishurul; Uvais, NA; Jafferany, Mohammad; Afra, TP; Muhammed, Razmi T
title: Palliative psychodermatology care during COVID‐19 pandemic
date: 2020-05-30
journal: Dermatol Ther
DOI: 10.1111/dth.13732
sha: 34b38c6648a32d78bc2e47052942ca3ee63d86bc
doc_id: 941648
cord_uid: a3jify5q

nan

Dear editor, COVID-19 virus has grabbed total attention of the medical world due to it's spread in pandemic proportion. It has exposed the unpreparedness and scarcity of resources through out the world in dealing with such a situation. When even essential services are affected badly, we cannot expect services like palliative care to function effectively. Even though the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance and the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared palliative care as a human right less than a decade ago, it has remained an under-resourced branch world over even in the best times. 1 COVID-19 pandemic has costed enormous problems in palliative and hospice care. In a study conducted among hospices in Italy it was clearly understood that all of them had rapidly implemented changes in practice which was not customized to hospice services. 2 Many centers had changed their admission criteria and visitors were not allowed except for dying patients.

Volunteers were not entertained in most centers while the remaining staffs were under emotiona l turmoil which was amplified by lack of enough resources like personal protective equipment, gloves and masks. It will have a serious negative impact on the quality of care to the terminally ill patients who got admitted primarily to increase the quality of life in the end-of-life. But unfortunately, the guidelines issued by WHO did not mention the area of palliative care, which was an oversight. 3 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 

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