Volume 24, Number 8: August 2023
Dear Readers,
This past month was extremely busy. Lukas and Ebtesam Ahmed PharmD, hosted the Advanced Pain Assessment and Management Course. This course was built on the basic online comprehensive course they both taught last year. This time, we invited participants to submit cases and take part in the case discussions. It was an excellent learning opportunity that drew 170 people from 59 countries! Members can watch or re-watch the lectures on our website, as well as recordings of the basic Pain Assessment and Management Course.
Aid for palliative care units
in Sudan during wartime
The palliative care program in Khartoum was forced to halt in April, when the war began in Sudan. Members of the team are afraid to venture into the streets, and are struggling for survival. The IAHPC has initiated a fundraising campaign on Global Giving to support palliative care workers who continue to work in Khartoum and adjacent towns. This project will help palliative unit team members to cover: Internet fees to enable online consultations between providers and patients, travel expenses for face-to-face home care wherever possible (in Damar, Medani, and the outskirts of Khartoum); and medical supplies and essential medicines for patients.
We have been working with Dr. Nahla Gafer, a radiologist and palliative care specialist and former board member from Sudan, to find ways we can help members of the palliative care team in Khartoum during the ongoing war. Consider donating if you can: any amount helps. And please spread word of the campaign among friends and colleagues.
Great response
The last day of July marked two important deadlines.
First, the 20% discount in membership fees for all new and renewing members, a campaign launched on June 1. In June and July, 53 individuals and five institutions joined or renewed. We now have a total of 996 members in 118 countries, of which 902 are individuals and 94 are institutions.
See the geographic breakdown in News, and the names of members who joined in the last month in Membership Matters.
Second, members were invited to apply for an IAHPC Scholarship to attend the 15th Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Conference 2023 in Incheon, Republic of Korea, October 4-7, 2023. The response was amazing—we received more than 40 applications! We will be announcing the winners in mid-August, but this will be a tough decision as budget constraints permit a limited number of scholarships. (FYI, you can donate specifically to the IAHPC Scholarship program.)
Our Newsletter & copyright
Finally, we wish to address the issue of copyright for our newsletter. Many of you know the amount of time and work that can go into preparing newsletter articles: each one is either written in-house, or is edited, sent to the author for review, revised as needed, formatted, and paired with duly authorized photos (whenever possible). When the article is ready, preparing it for publication also requires skill and time. The IAHPC Newsletter is protected by copyright, as is all original writing that is published. We are happy if other organizations wish to disseminate our articles, but we do require them to ask for permission in advance.
The IAHPC Newsletter is well known and highly regarded, thanks to the quality of the content that results from the hard work we put into it every month. We think that our readers agree with our position to protect the work that we offer at no cost to the global palliative care community.
Until next month,
Lukas Radbruch, MD
Chair
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director