relative to the size of the population. Some of the obstacles to the development of these services have included the lack of public awareness, restricted availability of opioids, and the absence of a national hospice and palliative care development plan. Key efforts made in the past 10 years have been initiated by individuals allowing for the emergence of the first non-governmental organisation providing primarily home-based hospice services in 2010, the opening of one palliative medicine unit at Cairo University in 2008 and an inpatient palliative care unit in Alexandria. Models of both home-based care and stand-alone hospices exist globally, but with the cultural and societal preferences of patients and their families to die at home in Egypt there is an inclination to focus on the development of home-based hospice and palliative care services. Israel The first hospice unit in Israel opened in 1983. More than two decades later, a 2016 study found that 46% of the general Israeli public had never heard of it, despite the 70% of physicians who reported that they had the skill to treat patients according to palliative principles. Other nations Hospice Care in Australia predated the opening of St Christophers in London by 79 years. The Irish Sisters of Charity opened hospices in Sydney (1889) and in Melbourne (1938). The first hospice in New Zealand opened in 1979. Hospice care entered Poland in the mid-1970s. Japan opened its first hospice in 1981, officially hosting 160 by July 2006. India's first hospice, Shanti Avedna Ashram, opened in Bombay in 1986. The first hospice in the Nordics opened in Tampere, Finland in 1988. The first modern free-standing hospice in China opened in Shanghai in 1988. The first hospice unit in Taiwan, where the term for hospice translates as "peaceful care", opened in 1990. The first free-standing hospice in Hong Kong, where the term for hospice translates as "well-ending service", opened in 1992. The International Hospice Institute was founded in 1984. World Hospice and Palliative Care Day In 2006, the first World Hospice and Palliative Care Day was organised by the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance, a network of hospice and palliative care national and regional organisations that support the development of hospice and palliative care worldwide. The event takes place on the second Saturday of October every year. Hospice home health Nurses that work in hospice in the home healthcare setting aim to relieve pain and holistically support