Children with life-limiting conditions: Establishing accurate prevalence figures

Children’s palliative care is a new and evolving specialty. In order to ascertain accurate data on the number of children requiring services, a number of countries, including Ireland, have undertaken children’s palliative care needs assessments. Regardless of the country of origin, the findings of these needs assessments are very similar. Irish child (0-17 years) population figures indicate that there are approximately 1.2 million children in Ireland¹. Hampered by ambiguity surrounding definitions and the lack of a national database, currently there are no definitive data on the number of these children living with a life-limiting condition.