{"entity":{"id":"idea-acc-home-based-end-of-life-kits","kind":"idea","name":"Home end-of-life care kits and trained family carers where no hospice exists","aka":[],"tldr":"Most people in poorer countries die at home without any professional support. A simple kit of medicines and supplies plus a few hours of training for a family member could make dying far less painful.","summary":"Where community palliative services do not exist, families care for the dying with no medicines or guidance. A standardised home kit (oral morphine, anti-emetics, laxatives, wound and pressure-care supplies, an illustrated guide) issued at discharge with brief carer training and a phone line has been piloted in several African settings. Defining the kit, training, and supply chain, and evaluating it rigorously, could produce a scalable minimum standard.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Pain relief and palliative care are unavailable to most): WHO fact sheet, Palliative care","url":"https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/palliative-care"}],"tags":[],"related":["idea-acc-local-oral-morphine-production"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-palliative","b-global-access"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Families receiving a kit and training will report significantly lower patient pain and distress in the last weeks of life and fewer emergency hospital visits than families receiving standard discharge.","rationale":"Family caregivers already provide most end-of-life care; equipping and training them is the only feasible model at scale in many settings.","test":"A cluster-randomised trial across 20 hospitals discharging patients with advanced cancer, with carer-reported pain and distress and unplanned readmission as endpoints.","maturity":"early-clinical","actor":"philanthropy","cost":"small","horizonYears":2},"route":"/ideas/idea-acc-home-based-end-of-life-kits/","neighbours":{"idea":[{"id":"idea-acc-local-oral-morphine-production","kind":"idea","name":"Locally prepared oral morphine solution, licensed for nurse prescribing","route":"/ideas/idea-acc-local-oral-morphine-production/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-global-access","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Most of the world has almost no cancer care","route":"/bottlenecks/b-global-access/"},{"id":"b-palliative","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Pain relief and palliative care are unavailable to most","route":"/bottlenecks/b-palliative/"}]}}