Dr. Katherine I. Pettus, PhD, IAHPC Advocacy Officer for Palliative Care Medicines, with her latest roundup of advocacy news.
In February, the government of Panama’s Office of Social Security (Caja de Seguro Social) and Ministry of Health sponsored a high level event, the Central American launch of the Lancet Report on palliative care and pain relief.
The event brought together palliative care leaders from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, and various South American countries. Sadly, Nicaragua was unrepresented. Health Minister Dr. Miguel Mayo opened the meeting, which consisted of two days of presentations and discussions of the Lancet Report data regarding the access abyss of controlled medicines in Central American countries, and how palliative care policies could be best developed and implemented.
My presentation (available here, in Spanish, along with the presentation by IAHPC Executive Director Liliana de Lima) addressed the issue of how palliative care organizations (national, regional, and international) can work with governments to improve services. I framed the issue of the global abyss of access to internationally controlled essential medicines as, first and foremost, an abyss of global solidarity.
A map produced by the Commission clearly shows the inequity in access between rich and poor countries, exacerbated by lack of funding for training and health system strengthening to support palliative care as an integral part of primary health care and universal health coverage (UHC). Palliative care exemplifies solidarity with the most vulnerable among us, and its expansion is key to healing the abyss.
I arrived a few days before the Panama meeting to accompany a palliative care team on home visits in a rural area. You can read about this great day on my blog. I also participated in my (first ever!) TV interview with Drs. Nisla Camaño, President of the Panama Palliative Care Association, and Temístocles Díaz, a Ministry of Health representative.
After the meeting, I stayed on for several days in order to call on the Papal Nuncio, Representative of the Holy See, and to visit other care facilities. Our delegation presented the Nuncio with a report of the previous week’s meeting and discussed the Vatican Academy for Life’s promotion of palliative care (see my blog).
My final stop in Panama was a visit to Casa Mausi, a guesthouse for cancer patients from rural areas who come to Panama City for treatments but have nowhere to stay, or no family members who can put them up for extended periods (read about it in my blog).
The Civil Society Task Force on Drugs held a hearing on February 20 at the United Nations to present its report based on an online consultation of 461 nongovernmental organization (NGO) respondents from 100 countries and territories in the fall of 2018. The consultation covered three key areas:
Although some of the report’s content addressed improvements and challenges in access to controlled medicines, the topic is largely absent, as it was ignored in the 2009 Political Declaration. The landscape has changed significantly in the last decade, and the access issue is now an important feature of national, regional, and multilateral discussions of drug policy.
Newly elected IAHPC board member Dr. Ebtesam Ahmed, PharmD, presented on the need to improve access to internationally controlled essential medicines for the relief of severe pain and palliative care at the Voices of Civil Society Hearing in New York. The text of her statement is here.
The New York hearing was followed by a parallel event in Vienna a week later, in preparation for the Ministerial Segment of the 62nd Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in March. IAHPC is cosponsoring three side events at CND on improving access to controlled medicines, and will be represented by myself, newly elected IAHPC board member Dr. Nahla Gafer (Sudan), Dr. Tania Pastrana (ALCP President), and Dr. Felicia Knaul (Lancet Commission and University of Miami).
Stay tuned for tweets from Vienna (13-21 March 2019) and next month’s report!
If you would like to join the IAHPC delegation for the World Health Assembly in May 2019, please email me as soon as possible: [email protected]. Delegates must be self-funded and current IAHPC members. We would love to have you! Come for as few or as many days as you like.
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