Message from the Chair
&
Executive Director
Kathleen M. Foley, MD (USA)
Liliana De Lima, MHA (USA)
Dear readers:
Welcome to this issue of the IAHPC Newsletter.
This month we are pleased to announce that we have awarded the following grants.
Traveling Scholarships:
- Dr. Ibrahim E.M. Elfadil from Khartoum, National Cancer Institute in Sudan will travel to the 4th Research Forum of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) in Venice, on May 25-27. IAHPC will also be sponsoring a session with EAPC on Palliative Care Research in Developing Countries during this research forum.
- Dr. Chitra Venkateswaran, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in India will travel to the 8th World Congress on Psycho Oncology, of the International Psycho Oncology Society (IPOS) in Venice in October, 2006. IAHPC will be co-sponoring a session on palliative care during this meeting.
- Dr. Anabelle de Guzman, President of Hospice and Family Care Foundation Western Viayas Medical Centre Iloilo, Philippines will travel to participate in the 7th International Workshop on Resource Mobilization (IWRM) in Bangkok, Thailand on 5th - 7th May 2006.
Traveling Fellowship:
- Dr. Parag Bharadwaj, associate medical director of Hospice and Palliative care at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, was invited by Dr. Penka Kolchakova tol teach palliative care at the College of Medicine at Medical University Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
We are very glad to be able to support these individuals and look forward to their reports after they return.
Many of you may have noticed that our website is undergoing several changes and many sections have been redesigned for better navigation and search capacity. One of these pages is the Employment Section that contains a list of job positions available in palliative care programs, institutions and organizations around the world. This listing is provided by IAHPC as a free service to the global palliative care community and has proven to be a great success. If you would like to announce a job opening in your hospice or palliative care program, or just want to find out what new job positions are available, go to our website at www.hospicecare.com. Look under the Resources tab, and then select Employment Section.
As some of you know, IAHPC is collaborating with the World Health Organization (WHO) in developing a list of Essential Medicines for Palliative Care. A committee made up of IAHPC Board members was commissioned to develop a plan for this list. The Chair of this Committee is Dr. Neil MacDonald from Canada. Other members of the committee included Carla Ripamonti, Eduardo Bruera, David Currow, Kathy Foley and Liliana De Lima. External advisers included Mary Callaway of the Open Society Institute and Doctors Peter Glassman and Karl Lorenz from the Veterans Administration. We are very appreciative of their hard work and dedication during the past months of intense work.
This has been a long process that included an anonymous online survey to rate several medications that many of you responded to. Many thanks to all those who participated in the survey and helped us advance this important task. The invitation to participate in the survey was sent to more than 100 physicians and pharmacologists around the world and the response rate was more than 50%. The results of this survey served as the basis the second stage of this process. This included a face to face meeting with pain and palliative care experts from around the world in Salzburg, Austria. Both Kathy Foley and I just returned from this meeting where we met with 31 representatives of pain and palliative care organizations from around the world. We are very happy that considerable progress was made and an initial list of medicines for palliative care was developed. We expect to be able to announce this list in the near future and submit it to WHO for review as well as to make it available to the palliative care community in general.
The organizations represented in this meeting were:
African Palliative Care Association (APCA)
American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM)
Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Association (APHN)
Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians
Christian Medical College - India
Eastern and Central Europe Palliative Care Task Force (ECEPT)
European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC)
European Federation of IASP Chapters (EFIC)
European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO)
Help The Hospices - UK
Hospice and Palliative Care Association of South Africa (HPCA)
International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP)
International Psycho Oncology Society (IPOS)
Latin America Association for Palliative Care (ALCP)
Li Ka Shing Foundation - China
Multinational Association for Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC)
National Association for Palliative Care (NHPCO) - USA
National Council for Palliative Care - UK
International Palliative Care Initiative - Open Society Institute (OSI)
Palliative Care Australia
Veterans’ Administration Medical Center - USA
Velindre NHS Trust - UK
Vietnam-CDC-Harvard Medical School AIDS Partnership (VCHAP)
WHO - Cancer Control Program
WHO - Policy, Access and Rational Use - Dept of Medicines Policy and Standards
International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC)
We are very grateful to the organizations that supported this meeting and to the participants for taking the time to travel and spend three days of hard work. We hope the final list of Essential Medicines for Palliative Care that resulted from this process will help improve the care of millions of patients around the world. Attention to the medical, nursing and social care needs must be accompanied by the availability of appropriate medications - including controlled substances. We will also continue to advocate for the importance of access to care.
Until next month,
Kathy Foley, MD
Chair, Board of Directors
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
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