Message from the Chair
&
Executive Director
Kathleen M. Foley, MD (USA)
Liliana De Lima, MHA (USA)
11th anniversary issue of the IAHPC Newsletter
Dear Readers:
We have several announcements.
This month marks the 11th Anniversary of our Newsletter! We now have more than more than 7,700 subscribers from around the world and the number of subscribers keeps increasing. This success is the result of a lot of hard work and dedication of several of our board and staff members. Many thanks to Dr. Bill Farr, our Newsletter editor for his hard work, to Anne Laidlaw for her technical support, to Doctors Carla Ripamonti and Roger Woodruff for their monthly reviews, to the organizations and individuals who contribute with important announcements, and especially to our subscribers for their readership. As Bill Farr states in his piece, this newsletter has gone through many stages of development. Years ago, when the Newsletter started, the main objective was to increase awareness about the international field and the biggest challenge was to deliver a printed version to members and subscribers from around the world. With the advances of technology, people are now connected easily and transfer of information happens within minutes of being created. Our present focus is establishing networks of collaboration among multilateral, regional, national and professional organizations, funding agencies, clinicians, academic centers and others, to develop strategies tailored to meet the needs at a local and regional level. Countries face different epidemiological trends and a single global strategy in palliative care would be inappropriate and inadequate. Our main challenge is to keep being relevant in an ever changing world and be able to offer news that are not only interesting but especially useful,so we will keep evolving with time and with the needs as they are expressed by our readers and members. We hope that in this process we have contributed in some way in the development of palliative care around the world. If you have any suggestions on how you think we can improve our Newsletter or have information that you think may be useful to others, please contact us at
www.hospicecare.com/contact.htm. We welcome your comments, input and feedback.
As many of you are aware, the IAHPC, with the support of 29 different pain and palliative care organizations, developed a list of essential medicines in Palliative Care that has been published and promoted extensively. This list is available in our website and can be downloaded at no cost by going to URL:
http://www.hospicecare.com/resources/emedicine.htm
The list was developed in response to a request from the World Health Organization (WHO) that started the concept of Essential Medicines thirty years ago. The WHO has published a Model List of Essential Medicines that is updated every two years by a committee of experts from around the world. This committee recently met in Geneva and among the medications that were reviewed were two from the IAHPC List: Modified release morphine for pain relief and Fluoxetine for depression. The process to add or delete a medication from the WHO Model List is very rigorous and is based on the best available evidence to support the application. We expect to be able to present additional applications for medications from the IAHPC List at the next WHO committee meeting in 2009.
Earlier this month we started sending a shipment of books and journals from our Clearing House Program. This will be our final shipment, after which we will close our Clearing House Program. Since the inception of the program in 2002 we have sent more than 4 tons of books and journals to 532 programs, individuals, hospices, hospitals, academic centers and libraries around the world. It is impossible for us to know the extent to which these publications are read or used by students, teachers and clinical workers or whether they contributed to changes in practice that benefited patient care. However, we have positive testimonials from many individuals who have received shipments which leads us to believe that this program has fulfilled its purpose. We are very grateful with all those donors to the program during these past years, especially Oxford University Press, Ms Pam Bennett from Purdue Pharma, the Pain and Policy Studies Group at Madison, Wisconsin, Marilyn Herleth from the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, and the Journal of Palliative Care among others. They all contributed to the success of the program through their consistent shipment of material and donations.
Thanks to Grunenthal GmbH for its unconditional donation to support our activities and the organization. We are very grateful for their commitment to support the development of palliative care across the globe and especially to
Dr. Detlef Von Zabern for his interest and dedication to this field.
Thanks also to all of you who have renewed or joined IAHPC recently. Those of you who are still not members or who have still not renewed your membership, please remember to do so. Your contribution is of great importance to us and our ability to continue helping others. We hope you find this 11th Anniversary issue of our Newsletter informative.
Until next month,
Kathy Foley, MD
Chair, Board of Directors
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
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