ANNOUNCEMENTS

Friends of IAHPC

About a year ago Enrique and Alejandra Ospina decided to design and develop a campaign to raise awareness among friends and the non-medical community about IAHPC, about the work that it does, and about hospice and palliative care in general. They decided to do this based on the conversations they had with their own friends and realizing how misinformed or unaware people are of what hospice and palliative care is and what it is that IAHPC does.

The campaign is called Friends of IAHPC and includes a website which will be updated periodically. The website includes reports about the IAHPC grantees, some of the films from the Life Before Death project, news about hospice and palliative care in general and a link to our donation page.
The campaign is owned by IAHPC to ensure that the information is controlled and monitored by the office, and is supported by donated time and funds.

If you would like to contribute to the content with news about hospice and palliative care for the non-medical community, please send an email to [email protected]
Please let us know your comments and suggestions.

To access the website click on http://www.friendsofiahpc.org/

New: Guide on Estimating Requirements for Substances under International Control

The World Health Organization (WHO), the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), and global experts joined forces to develop a new tool to assist countries to estimate their annual requirements for narcotic drugs for medical purposes.  An important treaty requirement of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is that National Competent Authorities (NCA) shall submit these estimates annually to the INCB in order to ensure that the amounts of available narcotic drugs and other psychoactive substances are limited to quantities required for medical and scientific purposes.

However, some countries do not submit these reports, or some submit estimates that are very low with no chance of meeting the medical need in their country that can be supported by their existing healthcare infrastructure.  Lack of report or incorrect report can serve as one of many barriers to patient access to these medications by slowing or preventing exports of the medications into the country.

Therefore, in order to allow for increased consumption of these medications, the WHO and INCB convened a working group that drafted a new document called “Guide on Estimating Requirements for Substances under International Control.”  Intended to assist NCAs in calculating the estimated requirements for controlled substances, the Guide identifies different methods, explains their potential strengths and weaknesses, and provides an overview of the major issues that need to be considered in order to apply these methods accurately.

The guide is now available on the WHO website in all six official UN languages (see below). It can be downloaded for free.

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