Compassion is costly

The Duchess of Cambridge used her first official speech on foreign soil to praise hospice care.  

While visiting a centre in Malaysia she described the support given to the terminally ill children as, “life changing.”  What a great way of putting the work of the hospice movement onto the world stage. What better way to raise awareness and appreciation than the backing of such a high profile Royal and the positive media coverage it would attract. Ahh, coverage, there was the problem.

When the Duchess walked forward, looked at her audience just a little nervously and delivered her carefully prepared speech, all about care and compassion, she could have little idea that on the other side of the world a magazine Editor was planning to disregard any notion of care or compassion for her and was making calculations of an entirely different kind, based on money, sales and sensation.

Within a few hours of the speech being given the front pages were not devoted to the ringing endorsement of hospice care, they focussed on coverage, or rather lack of it, of a very different kind. Even though newspapers in the UK didn’t print the actual photos it didn’t stop the issue dominating the news agenda.  That, in itself, is not the problem. Privacy and the treatment of the young royals is an important issue, not least because of what happened to the Prince’s mother,  but we have a media in this country that tends to underestimates the ability of the audience to understand multi layered stories  so “topless” became the story almost to the exclusion of everything else.

The Duchess’ speech was important, not just because it was a first, not only because of who she is, how she sounded and what she was wearing but because centres providing hospice care are relatively rare in the Far East. Palliative care is a growing area of expertise and is becoming increasingly available and understood. This makes the Duchess’ support even more important and raises some big questions. Could she become a worldwide champion for palliative care, able to highlight the difference it can make to children, adults and whole families? If so, what global impact might that have? What possibilities for the care of the dying around the world? These are big questions with potentially life changing answers.

Topless sunbathing,  peeping tom photographers, privacy for the Royals? There could be an answer to those questions in the French courts this week but it won’t change my life and I suspect it won’t change yours and it certainly isn’t as “life changing”  as what’s going on in the hospice in Kula Lumpur, and hospices around the world, right now.

Useful reading:

http://www.malaysianhospicecouncil.org/

Lynne Wilson

Guest Blogger