PALLIATIVE care is regarded as a "postcode lottery" on the Border and needs more resources, a Wodonga councillor says.
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Danny Lowe told councillors this month of attending a talk by Albury Wodonga Health palliative care physician Chi Li.
He said Dr Li, who has been on the Border since late last year after having worked in Melbourne, told of frustrations with the red tape of working on the Murray River.
"He's highlighted that our existing services are 'inadequate, inequitable and inefficient' and it's because of limited resources, human and infrastructure," Cr Lowe said.
"He calls it a 'postcode lottery' and...he gave an example of him being able to give care for someone but depending on where they live on the border or within the region he might not actually be able to walk into that part of the hospital for treatment.
"I'm talking about Tallangatta and regionally as well here, not just Albury Wodonga Health."
Cr Lowe raised the comments under general business at this month's council meeting.
"I wanted to highlight that because I think it's our job as local government and our job in the community to highlight these things and help advocate for more funding and stop the restriction on some of these cross border anomalies," Cr Lowe said.
"The fact that we've got a palliative care specialist that can't go into a certain part of the hospital is quite poor really.
"The hospital wasn't built for end of life care but we need to do something about this because if you're going to stick a cancer hospital next to a normal hospital, in one of those hospitals we need to have end-of-life specialists and end-of-life care."
