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World Hospice and Palliative Care Day - 11 October 2008
HOSPAZ
October 07, 2008

What is World Hospice and Palliative care day? World Hospice and Palliative Care day is a unified day of action to celebrate and support hospice and palliative care around the world. It takes place annually on the second Saturday of October every year. It will be commemorated on the 11th of October this year. It is an opportunity to raise awareness, improve access to palliative care and medications, and raise funds for hospice and palliative care in your community. On the first World Hospice and Palliative Care Day in 2005, there were over 1,100 events in 74 countries, and thousands of people from 128 countries around the world signed a global petition calling for better quality care for those affected by terminal illness. It is for anyone and everyone who cares about or is involved in hospice and palliative care, whether a person has a life limiting illness or someone who loves and cares for them. The aims of the day include raising awareness and understanding on the needs of people living with life limiting illnesses and how palliative care can improve their quality of life. Individuals worldwide are called to demand their human right to palliative care.

Theme: The theme this year is 'Hospice and palliative care: a human right' highlighting the fact that without access to the care they need, people affected by life limiting illnesses suffer unacceptable levels of distress that amount to a violation of their rights.

Human rights, as defined by numerous national laws, international conventions and consensus statements, align closely with central tenets of palliative care, which seeks to alleviate all forms of unnecessary pain and distress. The commission on human rights resolution 004/26 Item 7c calls on states "to promote effective access to preventive, curative or palliative pharmaceutical products or medical technologies". Lack of access to pain and symptom relief can prevent people living with HIV and AIDS, who may be experiencing painful and unpleasant side effects from antiretroviral treatments, from adhering to ARVs, with the result that their life expectancy is curtailed. This breaches the right to life.

What is palliative care? Palliative care is the management of the many (physical, psychosocial, spiritual and emotional) needs of people with progressive life limiting illness.

Palliative care:

• Addresses the individuals' psychological, social, spiritual and practical needs.
• Is not about 'helping someone die' but instead about helping someone live as comfortably as possible with their illness. It is supporting those closest to them and adding life to days, whether or not days can be added to lives.
• Is much more than just providing specialist symptom and pain relief - although that is a very important part. It respects the individuals' wishes and helps them in ways appropriate to them, both individually and culturally.
• Palliative care is flexible, adaptable and does not have to be expensive.

Everyone living with a life limiting illness has the right to quality hospice and palliative care to enable them to live with dignity and without undue pain or distress. In Zimbabwe palliative care is still not widely understood, implemented and not standardized, although it is one of the first countries in Africa to embrace hospice and palliative care concept. However, a variety of settings which include hospices, community home based care and hospitals are making efforts to provide palliative care, to improve the quality of life of patients and their children. Inadequate provision of pain medication has been one of the challenges in provision of palliative care. As such it is critical to improve and scale up palliative care support in Zimbabwe through the public health delivery system.

The Hospice And Palliative Care Association of Zimbabwe (HOSPAZ) together with hospices worldwide are calling for:

• Individuals to participate in World Hospice and Palliative care day to demand their human right to palliative care
• All countries to include palliative care in their national healthcare programmes and to make it available throughout existing healthcare infrastructures
• Greater and more secure funding to support hospice and palliative care services.
• Essential low cost opioid analgesics for pain and symptom control to be made available.
• Adequate care to be provided to people affected by a wide variety of life limiting illnesses, including HIV and cancer
• Increased availability of palliative care for people in all countries - particularly in rural areas and for marginalized groups.
• The integration of hospice and palliative care into all healthcare professionals' education programmes, both undergraduate and postgraduate
• Palliative care to be provided not as a last resort but concurrently with disease treatment such as ARVs or cancer treatment.

Lets show our support to those with life limiting illnesses and their families on this day!

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