Dear readers,
This past month was IAHPC members’ recognition month. IAHPC benefits every day from the hard work of our members who are devoted to the advancement of hospice and palliative care worldwide. Members exemplify a continuing commitment to patient care, improving education and developing favorable policies consistent with our mission. To celebrate our members’ month, IAHPC will be giving two prizes (a Traveling Scholarship or Traveling Fellowship of up to $2,000). Prizes will be given in two categories: a) Recognizing member loyalty and b) Increasing our membership. Keep an eye out for the announcement with the winners in the next few days.
Saturday October 14th was World Hospice and Palliative Care Day, a great campaign coordinated by the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA) with the support of the global palliative care community. The focus of this year’s World Day is: “Universal Health Coverage and Palliative Care: Don’t leave those suffering behind!”. Palliative care is an essential, defining part of Universal Health Coverage (UHC), including promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services. Without palliative care, there can’t be UHC as many patients with palliative care needs and their families would be left behind.
UHC means that all people and communities can use the promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative health services they need. We must bring UHC, including palliative care, to those who need it most. Many individuals, institutions and organizations throughout the world celebrated World Hospice and Palliative Care Day. More about the WHPCD, the initiatives which took place around the world and photos are available in the world day website. You can also read how one of our members celebrated World Day on the IAHPC Members Matter page of the newsletter.
Last month, IAHPC organized the third and last of a series of advocacy workshops for palliative care in Latin America funded by Open Society Foundations. For this one, we met in Guatemala City with representatives from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama. The two previous workshops were in Montevideo for the Southern Cone countries (April) and in Bogota for Andean countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru). Liliana and Dr. Katherine Pettus, IAHPC Advocacy Officer, facilitated along with Ms. Isabel Pereira from Dejusticia (a non-governmental organization), Dr. Tania Pastrana, President of the Latin American Association for Palliative Care (ALCP), and Mr. Diederik Lohman, Director of Human Rights and Health in Human Rights Watch (HRW). The objective of the workshops was to collaborate with the governments and the civil society in the implementation of four international policy documents:
The workshop allowed the participants to identify the priority areas of work with their governments and how, as representatives of civil society, they can support their governments in achieving the requirements and requests in these policies. Each country developed an action plan and, in association with the Latin American Association for Palliative Care, IAHPC will be providing support and guidance to the national associations for their implementation.
Until next month,
Lukas Radbruch, MD
Chair, Board of Directors
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
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