Volume 24, Number 2: February 2023
UN Focus on Ageing Now Includes End-of-Life Care!
By Katherine I. Pettus, PhD
IAHPC Senior Advocacy & Partnerships Director
Years of advocacy and partnership-building at the United Nations Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing, organized by the Department of Social and Economic Affairs, have paid off with robust attention to palliative and end-of-life care in the 2023 World Social Report launched January 12 and livestreamed on UN Web TV. The report tackles population ageing head on and pulls no punches about social determinants of health, gender inequity, loneliness, and lack of social support for informal or family caregivers, many of whom are women.
The report estimates that caregivers contribute 12 billion hours of unpaid labor annually to the global economy and states, "With people dying further into old age, when dementia, multimorbidity & frailty are more common... [and] forms of support less available, end-of-life care provision requires urgent policy attention" (italics added). IAHPC Advocacy Focal Points flagged this issue for their national delegations at the 152nd meeting of the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO), whose president this year is Slovenia, a tiny but mighty European country that promotes the rights of older persons and has tabled a report for the meeting about a program that includes palliative care training for informal caregivers of persons with disabilities.
WHO Executive Board Meeting
Dr Tania Pastrana, IAHPC research advisor and advocate extraordinaire, attended the WHO Executive Board meeting, January 30 to February 7 in Geneva, as our official delegate. She presented our statements on the floor and interacted with delegates from other non-state actors who submitted “constituency statements” that explicitly include palliative care and name the IAHPC as a member of their constituency. These groups were convened by the World Medical Association, Help Age International, and the International Council of Nurses.
IAHPC’s statements addressed pandemic preparedness and response and the need for integration of palliative care into health services for persons with disabilities, including dementia. Our advocacy focal points conveyed our submissions to their respective national delegations and encouraged them to include palliative care in national statements on relevant agenda items. See next month’s newsletter for Tania’s report on the meeting.
Improving availability of controlled medicines in Central America
Liliana and I met with Beatriz Ospina Aragón of the International Narcotics Control Board to discuss its convening with selected Central American countries in San Salvador in February. The meeting’s objective is to improve access to, and availability of, controlled essential medicines as mandated by international drug control treaties. The board considers the IAHCP a key partner in its work to improve availability, and we expect to participate in the public sections of the meeting to raise awareness about the importance of effective government partnerships with palliative care practitioners and associations. Practitioners are key informants with first-hand knowledge of patient needs, supply chain issues, and systemic problems accessing inexpensive generic medications and essential formulations, including those for children and older persons. I will report further on this in the March newsletter.
Improve availability in your country
The San Salvador meeting will be open to practitioners and civil society organizations for a limited time. It will then introduce national competent authorities to the INCB Learning Modules. These are technical tools designed to help governments adequately estimate and assess their needs for internationally controlled substances. The INCB developed the following e-modules for use of competent national authorities.
To optimize availability of controlled medicines in your health system, I suggest that you invite your national competent authority (the government division that approves estimates of controlled essential medicines for the treatment of serious health-related suffering) to review these modules.
- The Estimates System for Narcotic Drugs
- The Assessment System for Psychotropic Substances
- Estimates of Annual Legitimate Requirements (ALRs) for Imports of Precursors of Amphetamine-Type Stimulants
- The International Drug Control Framework and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB)
- Ensuring the Adequate Availability of Controlled Substances for Medical and Scientific Purposes
The modules are free of charge and available on request to staff members of competent national authorities; there is no staff limit. Successful completion of the modules is acknowledged with a certificate. They are available in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Translation into other languages is dependent on the availability of extrabudgetary contributions.
→ Click here for information to register and access INCB Learning e-modules.
I also recommend that readers interested in the ins and outs of this topic review my Advocacy Course for IAHPC members, specifically Modules 2 and 3 on controlled medicines.
Until next month, follow us on social media to get the latest news and developments!