Dear readers,
This month Lukas has contributed a piece on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) so I am writing this column by myself.
As many of you may be aware, the IAHPC recently published a position statement on euthanasia and PAS, which has generated quite a lot of support but also some criticism from those who support euthanasia and PAS. Lukas’s piece provides some insights and reflections on the current situation addressing the situation in Germany, in Europe and in the world. It’s a fascinating topic and one that always generates a lot of heated discussion!
This month I will be traveling to Europe to two meetings: To Lund University in Sweden, invited by Dr. Carl Johan Fürst to the Jubilee symposium to celebrate 350 years of the University. The symposium will be on Sustaniable Development of Palliative Care. I will be there with IAHPC board member, Dr. Chitra Venkateswaran, from India. I will give a talk on the palliative care needs in the world and Chitra will address the challenges that face patients with mental health issues with palliative care and her experience as director of the Mehac Foundation in India. Many thanks to Carl Johan for this invitation!
At the end of the month, I will be traveling back to Europe to attend a workshop convened by the Maruzza Foundation entitled Defining the Essence of Palliative Care for Older People: Religions together. The Maruzza Foundation is a family foundation which has advocated for more than 20 years for effective and sustainable palliative care for individuals with life-threatening conditions, and especially the most vulnerable populations. This workshop will focus on the palliative care needs of older persons and will hopefully result in a similar charter and call to action that the foundation published in 2015 for Palliative Care for Children: Religions of the World Charter for Children’s Palliative Care. I am very grateful to the Maruzza Foundation, and especially to Silvia Lefebvre D’Ovidio, the foundation’s director, for this invitation and look forward to the resulting document from this workshop.
We have just published the IAHPC Annual Report for 2016. This time it has a different format - We have shortened the text and included more pictures to make it easier to read. There is a lot of information packed in a neat report that I invite all to read in this link.
Last, but not least, I am happy to announce the 27 grantees of IAHPC Traveling Scholarships to the 15th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care, which will take place next May in Madrid, Spain:
Eastern Europe
Yeva Asribabayan, PhD (Armenia), Narine Movsisyan, MD (Armenia), Pati Dzotsenidze MD (Georgia), Edita Birskyte, MD (Lithuania), Rita Kabasinskiene MD (Lithuania) and Marija Inesa Poniskaitene MD/PhD (Lithuania).
Asia Pacific
Lee Chee Chan, MD (Malaysia) and Sunita Panta, MD (Nepal).
Latin America
Maria de los Angeles Minatel MD (Argentina), Marcela Gonzalez Otaiza, MD (Chile), Gabriela Sarmiento Brecher MD (Colombia), Nora Helena Saldarriaga (Colombia), Sandra Patricia Silva (Colombia), Leidy Viviana Nandar Araujo MD (Colombia), Jorge Alberto Ramos Guerrero MD (Mexico) and Luz Adriana Templos Esteban (Mexico).
Africa
Joshua Ngwang Menang RN (Cameroon), Phanice Jepkemoi Tom (Kenya), Kellen Kimani PhD (Kenya), Maya Jane Bates MD (Malawi), Davie Mpate (Malawi), Abdullateef Gbenga Sule MD (Nigeria), Coumba Gueya MD (Senegal), Nahla Gafer, MD (Sudan), Alick Austine Kayange, MD (Tanzania), Theodora Ndunguru (Tanzania) and Jack Turyahikayo (Uganda).
Congratulations to the grantees – we hope they will enjoy the congress and we look forward to their reports after they return.
Until next month,
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
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.