There are five hospices, two home palliative care teams (at hospices in Pavlodar and Almaty) and five day centres in Kazakhstan. Currently there are no special palliative care units for children, although children in need are accommodated within existing palliative care services. There are 135 beds allocated to adults in hospices, but none in chronic hospitals and nursing homes. Palliative care services in four of the hospices are provided by the state, whilst a non-governmental organisation (NGO) provides palliative care services at ‘Solaris’ Hospice, Pavlodar.⁶

‘Solaris’ Hospice provides medical, psychological, legal and social assistance for cancer patients and home care also.⁷ Valeriy Viktorovich Smola, director and hospice manager at Pavlodar Hospice provides an overview on the development of hospice and palliative care in Kazakhstan at the present time:

‘…palliative/hospice care is not developed well in the Republic of Kazakhstan…Among the reasons: absence of state program of hospice care development…lack of a well-developed information field; lack of concerted actions of the present hospices. This explains the fact that there are only five hospices in the Republic with the population of 15 million people.’⁸

Table 1: Palliative care provision in Kazakhstan 2005

There is one adult bereavement support team at Pavlodar Hospice. The bereavement support team works within the psychological care department, and consists of a psychotherapist and a psychologist who work both in the permanent department of the hospice and at the patients’ home. Bereavement support involves using different psychological methods such as counselling, positive psychotherapy, relaxation techniques and “recovery” from bereavement; the hospice also applies for financial support to be provided to patients or relatives from the commercial and state organisations where the patient used to work.⁹  

With regard to the future of palliative care in Kazakhstan, Valeriy Viktorovich Smola remains optimistic:

‘The new program of the Public Health development in Kazakhstan for 2005-2010 includes developing the hospice system in the Republic…If the state accepts the new program of [hospice] development, they will be opened in every city with a population over 100,000 people. We hope the program provides for participation of non-governmental organizations in its realization…We hope that in five or six years the number of hospices will be increased by three times as a minimum.’¹⁰