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The UK is gripped by election fever at the moment, and all government business has been put on hold until after the election on 7 June. So it is not surprising that an announcement made by the Department of Health on 1 May should have received little coverage outside the nursing press.

Tuesday 5 June saw the 20th anniversary of the first published account of the disease which would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. The story of its rapid and devastating global spread since then will be familiar to most people. In Britain and much of Western Europe, the disease is no longer the great cause for concern it once was. In the UK there have only been a few tens of thousands of HIV infections, and the panic of the early years of the epidemic has been replaced by complacency, as a result of which infection rates are increasing again after several years of decline. Yet elsewhere the epidemic rages unabated.

The 7th congress of the European Association for Palliative Care in Palermo, Sicily offered not only a break from the dismal British weather, but also a snapshot of the current state of palliative care in Europe and beyond. The picture presented was of a healthy, mature and confident discipline, which can encompass professionals from a wide range of backgrounds: medicine, nursing, social care, pastoral care. Over 450 posters and 260 presentations highlighted the diversity of palliative care practice, which perhaps more than any other specialty reflects the prevailing views of society in the country in which it is practised. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the ethics of palliative care.