Traveling Scholars Program Report
Rubayat Rahman, DR
Travel date: May 23, 2019
Name of Meeting/Event/Activity: 16th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC)
Origin: Dhaka, Bangladesh / Destination: Berlin, Germany
How was this meeting/activity helpful to you?
It was a new experience for me as a whole. I have never been in such conference where a huge crowed of palliative care specialist staying under in one roof. I am beginners in the field and every presentation and discussion made me think to do the same in my country. But we need more exposures from the developed world. I shared my experience with my colleagues, students and other physician in our departmental morning session and planning to discuss in our university monthly seminar, so that we can work as a team to incorporate palliative medicine everywhere needed. Specially, we all the grantee made a whatsup group on the very first day to keep us under the same umbrella where we can share our own issues and discuss to come to a solution. We will also can represent our own country in this group being an ambassador.
How will you new knowledge & acquired skills help in furthering your work in hospice and palliative care in your program/city/ or country?
I had gone through so many new skills and knowledge indeed. But in the same time, I will try to accommodate with my own available resources in my country. Being in a under developed country, I need to blend these new knowledges with the current available scopes. But definitely, I need to work for creating needs for palliative care among the society, so that it will corporate in the health policy soon. And by sharing the new knowledge with the other physicians, I can apply all these in our clinical practice and can discuss the new ideas of research with the research team as well.
How IAHPC Traveling Scholars Program be improved in order to help other future traveling scholars?
I do not think; I need to add furthermore regarding this procedure. But it would be more interesting if all these different people from different part of the world can able to present their country in front of the experts, so that they can develop good connection with the other people in the congress and can clear and develop their existing ideas for further development. In the same time, the leaders also can come forward to help these under develop countries with their expert opinion. Nevertheless, it is a fantastic opportunity for the young physician for their future career development.
Narrative summary highlighting the needs and challanges you face
According to national situation analysis of Palliative care In Bangladesh there are an estimated 600 000 people need the support of palliative care each year, but there is very limited availability of palliative care services for those who have life-threatening or life-limiting conditions. Out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures of households in Bangladesh comprise 64.3% share of the total health expenditure and collectively spent approximately Taka 103.46 billion (US$1.49 billion) in yearly on health. So, many curable diseases in this world are incurable in this part of the world. We need to arrange more training for the physician here as it is new concept in Bangladesh and in the same time it is also very mandatory to increase social awareness among the general people who believe physicians are here to cure everything. So according to me, more we can achieve if we can able to strengthen the concept of community based palliative care. In a country like us, institution based palliative care will not able to fulfill the needs of this service as a whole. Institution can act as a centre for training, awareness and research, keeping patient’s service simultaneously. But community based palliative care can focus on the issues more. Moreover, I find various dissimilarities in the definition of suffering in an under develop country in comparison to the other develop country. Here, people are fighting against poverty and food. So, sometimes it became difficult to define palliative care. We have available morphine in all forms in our country for the last 5 years but still the myths remains. Even the physician is not ready to accept it as a gold standard pain killer for cancer pain. We need to overcome this obstacle by providing more training how to use opioids. Simultaneously, the drug administration should be sensitizing regarding the sufferings of cancer pain.