The idea of a hospice can be traced to the early Christian communities who created institutions to care for their sick. In the Middle Ages, knightly orders founded hospitals where their members devoted themselves to the sick, especially travelers and those who had no one to care for them. Later on, monastic orders and volunteer doctors renewed the tradition, choosing to care for the poor, the lonely and those who had nowhere to go.

With the growth of large hospitals, only a few corners of the medical world tried to deal with the issues we face in hospice care. People suffering from cancer had no answer to their particular problems from the medical system. In the end came the idea of bringing back an old concept - hospice - to deal with this tragedy. The modern hospice movement originated in London in the 1960's with Dame Cicely Saunders and St. Christopher's Hospice. Now there are hospice institutions or plans for them in about 100 countries of the world.

The hospice movement was introduced to the Soviet Union in the late 1980's by Victor Zorza. He was a British journalist born in the Western Ukraine who devoted himself to the movement after his daughter was cared for in the London hospice.