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Local palliative care providers are racing to overcome logistical hurdles — acquiring personal protective equipment, training staff, co-ordinating resources — in order to provide end-of-life care to those people expected to die at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ottawa’s residential hospices are not accepting COVID-19 patients, but palliative care is available to people who decide against hospital treatment and want to die at home, said Nadine Valk, executive director of the Champlain Hospice Palliative Care program.

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The size and speed of the pandemic is a challenge, she said, and planning for the end-of-life needs of patients in the region is moving ahead on several fronts.

“It means what could be offered to someone in the home today, honestly, might look very, very different three days from now,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

Palliative care often involves co-ordinated visits by home care workers, nurses, family physicians or palliative care specialists. In the past, those health care workers have rarely used personal protective equipment (PPE), but the pandemic makes it a necessity. The problem is that PPE is in short supply, and other homecare and hospital workers are also desperately searching for more protective equipment.