{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,11]],"date-time":"2026-02-11T19:11:20Z","timestamp":1770837080149,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"BMJ","content-domain":{"domain":["bmj.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med Humanities"],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,21]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Each year, nearly 60\u2009million people need palliative care to relieve suffering associated with serious illness or trauma, yet it is rarely accessible in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Thus, implementation of palliative care in LMICs is both imperative and urgent. But the assumption that palliative care as practised in Western countries is the only \u2018enlightened\u2019 way to care for the seriously ill risks bad consequences. Chinua Achebe\u2019s novel\n                    <jats:italic>Things Fall Apart<\/jats:italic>\n                    depicts the harm that results when one culture arrogantly imposes itself on another, although with best intentions. The novel therefore can serve as a guide to culturally sensitive implementation of palliative care in non-Western cultures. While universal access to Western scientific medicine for relief of pain and other types of physical and psychological suffering is imperative, it must be recognised that scientific medicine is itself a culture and that there are fundamental differences between cultures in the meanings of health and healthcare, illness and suffering and death and afterlife. Optimum palliative care requires the recognition that people often think and suffer differently in different cultural and socioeconomic contexts. It requires the tolerance of and openness to others that is missing from the colonisers in Achebe\u2019s novel but found in the colonised.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1136\/medhum-2025-013340","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,11]],"date-time":"2026-02-11T18:20:24Z","timestamp":1770834024000},"page":"medhum-2025-013340","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/crossmarkpolicy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["\u2018Enlightened\u2019 and \u2018primitive\u2019: how can Achebe\u2019s\n                    <i>\u2018Things Fall Apart\u2019<\/i>\n                    inform global palliative care implementation?"],"prefix":"10.1136","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8868-0044","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Eric L","family":"Krakauer","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Program in Global Palliative Care, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA"},{"name":"Division of Palliative Care & Geriatric Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA"},{"name":"Department of Ethics, Social Medicine and Palliative Care, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Sophie J","family":"Krakauer","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Newton South High School, Newton, Massachusetts, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Christian","family":"Ntizimira","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"African Center for Research on End of Life Care (ACREOL), Kigali, Rwanda"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"239","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,11]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026021110201852000_medhum-2025-013340v1.1","unstructured":"Achebe C . 2017. 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