The IAHPC mourns the death of Dr. Robert Twycross, an outstanding pioneer of the global palliative care movement. A lifetime member of the IAHPC, Dr. Twycross made a significant contribution to the IAHPC List of Essential Medicines, developed years before the World Health Organization added a special section for essential medicines for pain relief and palliative care.

Dr. Twycross was born on January 29, 1941, and died on October 22nd, 2024.  He was a pioneer of the hospice movement, helping to establish palliative care in the 1970s as an accepted field of modern medicine. Two years ago, he gave this interview for the IAHPC Newsletter.

A 1965 graduate of Oxford University Medical School, Dr. Twycross worked under Dame Cicely Saunders in 1971 as Clinical Research Fellow at St Christopher’s Hospice in London. His subsequent work into the efficacy of the ‘Brompton Cocktail’ led to the adoption of a more rational approach to cancer pain management, collaborative work that resulted, among other things, in the WHO Cancer Pain Analgesic Ladder.

A founding member of the International Association for the Study of Pain, Association for Palliative Medicine (UK), Palliative Care Research Society (UK), the British Lymphology Society, and the European Association for Palliative Care, Dr. Twycross taught in more than 50 countries and held many senior academic titles from around the world. From 1988 to 2005, Dr. Twycross served as the Director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Palliative Care.

Dr. Twycross was a founding author of the Palliative Care Formulary and authored numerous papers and chapters on palliative care. He also edited several books, including the highly successful and well-established introductory text “Introducing Palliative Care”.

His life’s work has had a lasting impact on the development and recognition of palliative care as a vital aspect of modern medicine and his incalculable contributions live on in IAHPCs vision of a world free from health-related suffering.