Expert Guidance on Medicines to Treat Common PC Symptoms

IAHPC's Manual on the Use of Essential Palliative Care Medicines for Adults is a useful companion to medicines listed in the recently updated and published Essential and Expanded Packages for Palliative Care.

Available free to download or read online, the manual, released on August 22, 2025, is arranged by symptom. It begins with basic information about the symptom and lists the medicines used to manage them. It details the route, starting dose, frequency, daily maximum, and recommendations as well as precautions. Each medicine includes experts' detailed comments.

"Improved access to medicines cannot ensure that they are optimally used," states IAHPC Research Advisor Tania Pastrana in the manual's introduction. The manual aims to change that.

Here is an example (click on the image to enlarge it): Anorexia

Effort was needed to build consensus

"The development of the manual, which took more than two years, involved a multi-step methodology, including a Delphi process and an expert review to build consensus among global palliative care specialists," says IAHPC Executive Director Liliana De Lima. "This took quite some time and effort, particularly for certain medications for which there was little agreement on the frequency and dosing. We are very grateful to the IAHPC members who responded to our invitation to participate in this consensus process and look forward to your feedback and comments on the manual's usefulness."

The manual is part of the IAHPC’s working plan as a non-state actor in official relations with the World Health Organization. The WHO requested the work to fill the need for an updated, reliable guide that is freely available and geared to medicines available to prescribers working in low-income countries.

Editor's note: In addition to downloading the manual or consulting it online, you can listen to an audio podcast about it: