Traveling Scholars Program Report
Esther Nafula Wekesa
Travel date: May 30, 2018
Name of Meeting/Event/Activity: 3rd ICPCN Conference: Inspiration, Innovation, Integration
Origin: Nairobi, Kenya / Destination: Durban, South Africa
Photos
Esther Nafula Wekesa conference photo How was this meeting/activity helpful to you?
This meeting enabled me to learn the following issues: 1) The state of pediatric palliative care in the world. 2) Strategies being used by others to enhance children’s palliative care. 3) Encouragement to inspire others in pediatric palliative care. 4) Current developments such as perinatal palliative care. 5) How to care for children and their families when death is near
How will you new knowledge & acquired skills help in furthering your work in hospice and palliative care in your program/city/ or country?
I will work on the next phases of my project which is to train staff on pediatric palliative and having regular clinics to review children needing palliative care.
How IAHPC Traveling Scholars Program be improved in order to help other future traveling scholars?
Accommodation tends to be a bit costly. It would really help if some of the funds supported a percentage of the total accommodation cost.
Narrative summary highlighting the needs and challanges you face
I wish to highlight two challenges commonly encountered in my country: 1) 1. Lack of paediatric palliative care.Only one facility offers paediatric palliative care in a country with a population of over 40 million people while 67 centers offer adult palliative care. Many children needing palliative care are not able to access it.I was inspired by this conference to advocate for provision of peadiatric palliative care in our facilities.I plan to coordinate with the national association to see how this can be achieved. 2) Children are often referred late to palliative care as many physicians and health care providers believe this service is not needed by ailing children. I was inspired at this conference to positively influence my colleagues to refer children for palliative care.