The board of directors of the African Palliative Care Association is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Eve Namisango as Executive Director as of November 1, 2025, following the retirement of Dr. Emmanuel Luyirika, who had led the organisation for 13 years.
Dr. Namisango certainly needs no introduction as she has been a key member of the global palliative care fraternity for over a decade, with interactions that range from grassroots interventions in many African countries, to sitting on boards of global hospice palliative care organisations, as well as significant involvement with the academia in Africa and beyond. She was the Head of Programmes, Research and Development at APCA and has been with the organisation for 15 years.
Dr. Eve acknowledging her new role and reminding delegates of APCA’s strategic focus.
Describing the rigorous hunt for a successor for Dr. Emmanuel Luyirika, the outgoing APCA board chair, Ms Thobekile Finger said there was stiff competition for the position, with applicants from all over the world.
“We are proud to say that Eve came out top among numerous highly competent candidates. She demonstrated a clear grasp of the status quo of palliative care in Africa at all levels and articulated a robust vision and strategy on how quality palliative and chronic care can become more accessible to all adults and children who need it in Africa, with emphasis on evidence”.
Dr. Namisango (mostly known as Eve) has over 17 years experience in health-related research and education, and her interests are in the following areas: children’s palliative care, outcome measurement, epidemiology, health economics, evaluation of palliative care services, death and dying end of life care issues, access to opioids , pain and other symptoms in palliative care. She has passionately pursued these as head of programmes and at APCA through several training courses, research projects, education fairs and webinars for knowledge translation.
APCA partners celebrate with the new ED
Eve has been instrumental in supporting African stakeholders to embrace technology to improve patient outcomes, and has co-led the development of the novel APCA-POS for children, which empowers children to participate in their care and health workers, to better assess their multi-dimensional symptoms and concerns and therefore deliver child-centred care. As a member of the APCA senior management team, she played a key role in organisational strategy and business development. Together with a global team of researchers and academia, she was instrumental in the development of the Centre for Excellence for Palliative Care in Africa in September 2025, set to promote education, research and knowledge translation in palliative care in Africa.
Her appointment was officially announced in Gaborone, Botswana, during the 8th International APCA Conference where most palliative care stakeholders were in attendance.
As she assumes this role, Eve has this to say;
“I am so grateful to the APCA board for giving me the opportunity to serve the region in this capacity. I look forward to consolidating all our achievements and taking our vision and mission to the highest possible level of excellence. I am excited about continuing to work with our current, previous and new partners as well as patients and their families on this journey.”
Eve is a Cicely Saunders Institute alumni and has vertical expertise in Palliative Care Policy and Rehabilitation Economics, Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is passionate about engagement of policy makers, patient (adult and children) and family engagement and involvement.
We wish Dr. Namisango great success in her new role and look forward to palliative care scaling new heights in Africa in the years ahead.
I just read an article on NPR about your work along with an Irish woman named Callahan, helping retired nuns in Uganda. I t was sad but inspiring. There was no means to contribute included in the piece. How can people interested in helping contribute?