Current awareness of palliative care in China

Palliative care was introduced in China with the establishment of a hospice care research centre in Tianjin municipality in 1988. However, in a culture in which discussing death remains taboo, public education on death and dying has been scarce. Families of patients with terminal illnesses often feel pressure to opt for life-prolonging care. As such, palliative care has developed slowly in China, with the Economist Intelligence Unit ranking China 71 of 80 countries on palliative care in 2015.1