Dr. Katherine Irene Pettus Advocacy Officer, International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC), describes some recent key achievements.
IAHPC policy advocacy has focused on three broad areas since the last report:
The Independent Expert on the Rights of Older Persons, Dr. Rosa Kornfeld Matte, presented her new thematic report to the Human Rights Council, focusing on the rights to autonomy and care. The report, which is available in all the UN languages, contained several excellent references to the need to develop palliative care, and the need to improve access to controlled medicines more generally. October 1, the International Day of Older Persons, featured an expert panel at the Council, and provided the opportunity for both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) to release their reports: World Report on Ageing and Health and Long-term Care Protection for Older Persons.
The WHO Report, which focuses on older-person-centered and integrated care, states clearly that “Palliative and end-of-life care strives to ensure that people with advanced illness are treated with dignity and respect, and according to their needs and wishes.” The ILO report highlights the lack of long-term care policies in most countries, which means, of course, wide gaps in the provision of palliative care and pain relief. It reveals a global shortfall of 13.6 million care workers, a human resources gap that undermines the delivery of quality care to more than half of the world’s older persons. In my intervention from the floor, I asked all present (it was a very high level and well attended panel) to advocate for palliative care for older persons in any long-term care policies. Failure to achieve quality long-term care for our growing populations of older persons leaves lawmakers open to calls for assisted suicide and societies vulnerable to the normalization of euthanasia. On October 10, World Hospice and Palliative Care Day, the Independent Expert, Dr. Rosa Kornfeld Matte, and her counterpart, the Special Rapporteur on Health, Danius Puras, released a statement on the right to pain relief, saying that “Older persons have the right to live the last years of their lives with dignity and without unnecessary suffering. Obstacles to accessing palliative care must be identified and tackled to provide relief for those in need.”
The central event for the palliative care community at the Human Rights Council was a plenary panel on the impact of drug policy on the enjoyment of all human rights. Ambassador Srisamoot of Thailand, Chairperson of the 58th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), said that it was the responsibility of the international community to address the lack of access to medicines for pain relief in many countries. The High Commissioner’s report contains an important section on human rights and access to controlled medicines for pain relief, palliative care, and treatment of opiate dependence syndrome. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) will present this report to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) next month, giving the issue of controlled medicines unprecedented historical visibility.
Several important side events were held at the margins of this panel, highlighting the impact of human rights on drug policy, the CND preparations for UNGASS, and the global crisis of untreated pain. Mme. Ruth Dreifuss of the Global Commission on Drug Policy chaired one panel, which featured a presentation by Human Rights Watch Associate Director, Diederik Lohmann. The Global Commission released their new report on the Global Crisis of Avoidable Pain.
Work at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna has been particularly intense as there have been several intersessional meetings focusing on the preparations for UNGASS2016. Our priority, of course, as noted above, is to ensure that the issue of controlled medicines such as morphine is included in all the proposed outcome documents prepared by CND, and has a prominent position in member state deliberations. To that end, IAHPC collaborated with the Missions of Norway and Australia to invite key WHO essential medicines staff to Vienna to present on the global situation to member states. The event was very well received and referenced by many speakers during the session, as well as at the HRC during the following weeks’ panels on drug policy. IAHPC will be represented on the Board of the Vienna Non-Governmental Organization Committee on Drugs (VNGOC), as I was recently elected to the position of vice-chair, and we look forward to serving this broader community during this crucial period of great change and positive developments.
Other events were a two-day seminar on human rights and controlled medicines at the Brocher Institute in Geneva where I presented my advocacy work, along with IAHPC Board Chair, Lukas Radbruch, Board Member, Mhoira Leng, and Dr. Chiltra Venkatesh. I also attended the WHO meeting in Dublin on the implementation process of the World Health Assembly Resolution on Palliative Care. The All Ireland Institute for Hospice and Palliative Care hosted the star-studded Global Colloquium on Palliative Care in Dublin, including a presentation on Leadership, Research, Education, Practice from IAHPC Executive Director, Liliana De Lima and Frank Ferris, from Ohio Health.
Previous Page | News Index | Next Page
This newsletter, including (but not limited to) all written material, images, photos are protected under international copyright laws and are property of the IAHPC. You may share the IAHPC newsletter preserving the original design, the IAHPC logo, and the link to the IAHPC website, but you are not allowed to reproduce, modify, or republish any material without prior written permission from the IAHPC.