Palliative care and end of life: the debate between the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Government

It is «appropriate for Italy to adopt the obligation to offer palliative care courses to all citizens» with «the burden of finding funds and financing. There is already a good law on palliative care in Italy" but "those who propose themselves as defenders of life must also find the money to implement them. Fewer weapons and more palliative care."

This was stated by Mgr. Avvenire. Renzo Pegoraro, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, after the Veneto law. "There is no right to assistance in suicide" but "the obligation on the State to take care, and also to respect the individual's will not to receive treatment".

In this regard, Palazzo Chigi sources communicated that «the overall picture demonstrates how the government has progressively increased resources for palliative care, combining the increase in funding with new verification mechanisms aimed at guaranteeing their effective use by the Regions. The objective remains to provide the tools to reduce as much as possible the extremely difficult conditions of patients with serious pathologies and the family members who are at their side".

«With regards to palliative care - we read - the Government has progressively increased the available resources. With the budget law, an additional 10 million euros per year have been allocated from 2024 and a further 10 million from 2025, thus bringing the total funding for palliative care to 120 million euros per year from 2025. At the same time, checks on the correct use by the Regions of the allocated resources have been strengthened, with a system that will be fully operational from 2028. Furthermore, starting from 2026, a further 20 million euros per year have been foreseen, allocated as a priority to the hiring of staff for the strengthening of the palliative care networks, as provided for in article 1, paragraph 367, of law no. 199 of 2025".

Veneto was the first region governed by the center-right to define the times and procedures for medically assisted suicide. The new Venetian law obviously maintains, and is the necessary premise, the perimeter of what was established by the Constitutional Court with a 2019 ruling: the national requirements for obtaining a positive response to medically assisted suicide remain firm, and therefore access is allowed to people suffering from irreversible pathologies, who depend on vital health treatments, who experience physical or psychological suffering considered intolerable, and who are fully capable of understanding and wanting, therefore of making informed and free decisions for their own body. Only the patient can request access at the end of life.