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Dear Readers:
On December 31st, I will complete my term as Chair of the Board of Directors of IAHPC so this is my farewell message to all of you. I am very
grateful for the support I received from the IAHPC members, our Board of Directors and the palliative care community in general during my tenure as Chair. When I was elected to this position four
years ago, I felt that IAHPC had to become an effective and efficient organization to promote palliative care in the World. With the help of the Board we developed a strategic plan to map the road
ahead. I am proud to say that I believe we have accomplished this to a great degree.
The following is a summary of our accomplishments:
- Through the Clearing House Program we have been
able to send more than 3,000 lbs of donated books and journals to more than 100 programs, libraries and hospitals in 45 developing countries;
- Since its beginning, the IAHPC Traveling Fellowship Program
has paid for the cost of travel of 29 individuals who spent time teaching palliative care in Argentina, Cambodia, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Congo, Cuba, Ghana, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia,
Moldova, Mongolia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, St. Lucia, Swaziland, Thailand, The Philippines, Uganda and Vietnam. Our past Chairman, Dr. Roger Woodruff, started this wonderful program
and continues to chair the Traveling Fellowship committee. This program is based on the concept that the best approach to teach palliative care is to use a hands-on approach that is tailored to
the needs of the local patients and is within the culture, facilities and limitations of each setting. We are very proud of the accomplishments and teachings of these extraordinary individuals.
- The Traveling Scholarship Program
paid for the travel of palliative care leaders from Argentina, Chile, India, Malaysia, Romania and Zimbabwe to attend palliative care meetings in The Netherlands, USA, Uruguay and Canada.
- The Annual Recognition Awards program was created in three
categories: Institutional, Individual (named the Professor Vittorio Ventafridda Award) and University. Winners of the Institutional Award include the Programa Casa de Cuidados Paliativos in Chile;
the Programa de Cuidados Paliativos in the Instituto Nacional de la Nutricion in Mexico; and the Programa de Cuidados Paliativos in el Servicio Extremeño de Salud in Spain. Winners of the
Professor Vittorio Ventafridda Award include Dr Anne Merriman from Uganda; Dr Neil MacDonald from Canada; and Dr Gustavo De Simone from Argentina. The winner of the University Award was the Ludwig-Maximilians-University
in Germany for its excellent palliative care teaching program.
- The Faculty Development Program was started on 2004. We are now supporting three Palliative Care Faculty positions in Tanzania,
Argentina and India and we are sure it will have an impact in the development of palliative care education in developing countries.
- The IAHPC website at www.hospicecare.com has become an invaluable tool for information
dissemination and promotion of palliative care and is consistently ranked in the first place by search engines. The site now has almost 2,000 pages of information which are constantly being updated.
All the pages are free and accessed by more than 1,000 readers every day from all corners of the globe. I wish to thank our Webmaster, Anne Laidlaw, for her support and contributions to our organization.
- We developed the IAHPC Press
and published the following: Cuidados Paliativos: Guias para el Manejo Clínico, edited by Liliana De Lima and I (in Spanish, as a joint publication with the Pan American Health Organization);
The IAHPC Manual of Palliative Care by Drs. Derek Doyle and Roger Woodruff; The IAHPC
Fact Sheets by Derek Doyle and the publication Palliative Care in the Developing World: Principles and Practice, edited by William Farr, Roberto Wenk and Liliana De Lima and I. These Fact Sheets
and the Manual of Palliative Care are both available for free in our website. I wish to thank Roger, Derek, Liliana, Roberto and Bill for their commitment and hard work in making this possible.
- I am also grateful for the hard work put into this Newsletter (NL) by its editor, Dr. Bill Farr. The NL now reaches more
than 4,000 people around the world and has become a useful tool to disseminate information and highlight new developments and accomplishments from our palliative care colleagues around the globe.
Many thanks also goes out to all those who contributed pieces and stories, especially to our Board members who each month put a lot of work into making this NL a useful tool for all: Doctors Paulina
Taboada (Ethics article); Carla Ripamonti (Article of the Month), and Roger Woodruff (Book Reviews).
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The organization’s finances have improved and we have all worked very hard in order to achieve this. Many thanks to
all the supporters, donors, members, pharmaceutical companies and organizations who donated funds to support our programs during these past four years. Without their support we wouldn’t have
been able to achieve our goals. Please remember that IAHPC still depends on your help to continue its work.
My main gratitude goes to the outstanding and generous support received from our Executive Director, Liliana De Lima. Liliana
was the force behind all these projects and I consider my main achievement having been able to recruit her to IAHPC.
As the year ends, several of our Board members will be completing their terms: Dr. Young Hong from Hong Kong; Dr Debbie Norval
from South Africa; Dr. Elina Clemens from Germany; Dr. Alan Nixon from Canada and Dr. Odette Spruyt from Australia. Please join me in thanking them for their past contributions to IAHPC and their
efforts in helping the organization achieve its mission in the promotion of palliative care around the globe. It has been an honor for me to have been able to work with this Board of Directors
composed of extraordinary palliative care individuals and professionals.
On January 1st, we will be extremely pleased to receive Dr. Kathleen Foley as the new IAHPC Chair. I look forward to continue
serving IAHPC under her outstanding leadership and wish her the best of luck in the upcoming years. IAHPC is really fortunate to have a global leader like her take us into exciting new directions
and projects.
I want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a great holiday and the best for the New Year.
Sincerely,
Eduardo Bruera, MD, Chair, Board of Directors
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