2015; Volume 16, No 12, December

Message from the Chair and Executive Director

Dear readers,

Welcome to our last issue of this year's Newsletter.

By the end of this year, four board members will be completing their terms: Zipporah Ali (Kenya), Julia Downing (Uganda), Scott Murray (UK), and Gayatri Palat (India). Please join us in thanking each of them for their contributions to IAHPC and their efforts in helping the organization achieve its mission. It has been an honor for us to work with these members of the Board.

During the past months, we sent several announcements for IAHPC affiliates to nominate candidates to these positions and the deadline for nominations was November 30th. The response was enthusiastic and several candidates were nominated. Newly elected or re-elected members will be announced early in January 2016.

As the year ends, we are proud of the things we were able to achieve through our programs and projects and of the support we were able to provide to developing countries in the accomplishment of our mission. Some examples of activities aimed to improve the adequate care of patients and families around the world, include:

• An IAHPC membership fee schedule based on the Gross National Income of the country where the applicant lives, which starts at $10 per year for individuals living in countries classified as Low by the United Nations.
• Access to IAHPC members to the CINAHL database, with thousands of citations and online journals, including the following palliative care journals:
  • Indian Journal of Palliative Care
  • International Journal of Palliative Nursing
  • Internet Journal of Pain, Symptom Control & Palliative Care
  • Journal of Palliative Medicine
  • Palliative Medicine
  • Progress in Palliative Care
• Traveling Scholarships. Sixty-three traveling scholarships to individuals from 27 countries were awarded during 2015. Through this program IAHPC provided financial support to palliative care leaders from developing countries to attend an international palliative care congress, course, seminars or training sessions. Of these, 35 attended the 14th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care in Copenhagen. The July and August editions of this Newsletter includes narratives from the grantees describing their experience attending the congress and how they will use their new knowledge to advance palliative care.
• The celebration of October as the Members’ Recognition Month to build awareness and understanding of the vital function that our members play in the advancement of our mission as well as to give recognition to our members for their support. Two scholarships to attend the World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) were awarded in the following categories:
  • Increasing Membership: to increase the number of members by giving a prize to the individual who recruits the highest number of new or renewed members during October. The winner of this prize is Dr. Alick Kayange from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Many thanks to Alick for his contribution and support! This edition includes a piece from Alick, describing his involvement with IAHPC.
  • Recognizing Loyalty: to maintain the loyalty of members by giving a prize to a selected individual or institution that keeps the IAHPC membership active for at least two consecutive years. The winner of this award for 2015 is Dr. Sinead Donnelly. We will feature her in a future edition.
• Opioid Price Watch project. During 2015, IAHPC announced phase 2 of Opioid Price Watch (OPW), a project to monitor and report the dispensing price of opioids around the world. This project is as a component of the agreement of work as a non-governmental organization in formal relations with the World Health Organization (WHO). This project was funded with a seed grant from the US Cancer Pain Relief Committee. A report on the pilot completed in 2013 and published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, presents data on availability, dispensing prices and affordability submitted by 30 participants from 26 countries. Using the results from the pilot, the IAHPC has also created an interactive map, highlighting the different prices of opioids around the world. In the second phase of this project, our members collected data from 60 pharmacies from 40 different countries. The data is displayed in the IAHPC website. A report will be prepared soon and a paper with the results will be submitted for publication.
• Implementation of the World Health Assembly (WHA) Palliative Care Resolution. IAHPC joined forces with other organizations to work and support the implementation of the WHA Palliative Care Resolution, adopted in Geneva on May 2014. As part of our commitment to the WHO, and in our efforts to help the organization, we supported Dr. Tania Pastrana so that she was able to spend the past two months working in WHO Geneva to help in the development of the palliative care and pain guidelines.
  
  In addition to supporting the WHO, directors and staff members visited several countries, working with governments and the civil society to help develop and take the steps for the implementation of the resolution. Countries visited include Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ethiopia, India and Mexico among others. The picture below shows the IAHPC Executive Director, during a visit to the National Cancer Institute in Mexico. Policymakers, government representatives, health professionals and academia are working together and taking amazing steps to implement palliative care as a component of the healthcare system. Congratulations to all for their efforts and wonderful progress.
  
  
  Pictured in the photo with Liliana are (from left to right), Dr. Emilio Herrera from New Health Foundation (Spain), Dr. Celina Castañeda, Coordinator of Palliative Care at the Seguro Popular (Mexico), Dr. Antelmo Abelardo Meneses, Director of the NCI (Mexico), Liliana De Lima, and Dr. Silvia Allende, Director of the Palliative Care Unit at the NCI (Mexico).
• Transforming the system. IAHPC joined forces with the Fundacion FEMEBA (Argentina) and DAAD Foundation (Germany) to implement an initiative to incorporate palliative care into the undergraduate levels of medical and nursing schools. The pilot project has been implemented in Colombia in workshops on the identification of palliative care competencies and on methods for palliative care teaching. A report and a paper have been published. Forty-two participants, in total representing 21 universities, participated in the workshop, learning by experimenting with novel teaching methods and ideas. The photos below show the participants in the workshops in Cali (left) and in Bogota (right).
  
  Many thanks to Doctors Roberto Wenk (past IAHPC Chair and member of the IAHPC Board), and Tania Pastrana, from the University of Aachen in Germany, for their contributions and hard work. Thanks also to Dr. Sofia Bunge from Programa Argentino de Medicina Paliativa for helping and presenting their teaching experience for the past 10 years in Argentina.
• New staff member. Ms. Genevieve Napier joined IAHPC as Manager of Programs and Projects. In this newly created post, she will be assisting the Executive Director in planning, implementing and evaluating the ongoing and future IAHPC programs. We are very happy to have her as a member of the IAHPC family and look forward to her contributions to the global palliative care community. Her bio and picture are available in our website under the About Us – Staff and Officers page.

We could not have achieved the above without the generous support of our Board of Directors, our members, donors, foundations and organizations. We are especially grateful to the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Open Society Foundations, Pettus Foundation, and the US Cancer Pain Relief Committee for their support.

All our donors and supporters believe in IAHPC’s mission and in our goal to have an impact on the promotion and development of palliative care. Our ability to continue to help others depends heavily on the support we receive from all, so please consider donating to IAHPC. You can donate through our website.

We face many challenges in the near future, especially in the light of the current global economic situation. We are aware that we face financial constraints and have prepared ourselves to meet these challenges. Our strong commitment to supporting the development of palliative care around the world will continue to be our driving force. We wish to thank all those who make our work worthwhile – the patients and their families, the healthcare workers, and the volunteers who dedicate and give so much to palliative care.

Best wishes to all of you, your friends and family members for the coming holidays, and we hope that next year will bring happiness and success. May your dreams come true.

Until next month,

Lukas Radbruch, MD
Chair, Board of Directors

Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director

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