MOSCOW, March 6 (RAPSI) – President of Russia Vladimir Putin has signed the palliative care bill into a law. The document is published on the Official Internet Portal of Legal Information on Wednesday.

The law specifies the concept of palliative care that involves a package of measures including medical treatment, after care and psychological actions aimed to improve the quality of terminally ill patients’ living and is oriented to the amelioration of pain.

The law confirms the right of terminal patients to pain relief including drug preparations and medical devices.

Such assistance is to be rendered on an outpatient basis and at hospitals by specially trained health workers.

Palliative patients are also to receive social and psychosocial support as well as religious care, according to the law. Volunteers, social workers and representatives of religious confessions would be involved in these services.

The respective amendments have been introduced to the law “On the Fundamentals of Public Health Protection in the Russian Federation”.