The Palliative Care Association of Uganda (PCAU) is excited to announce that we have secured a small grant from HelpAge International to strengthen our advocacy and palliative care programming for older persons and their families in Uganda.
We are one of the organizations that received small grants through the Strengthening Civil Society for Older People’s Rights and Engagement (SCORE) program. The HelpAge International SCORE Program is a multi-country, three-year initiative (2025-2028) supported by Sida.
The award to PCAU, titled ‘Promoting Healthy Aging and Dignity for Older Persons through Community and Health Systems Strengthening,’ aims to advocate for integrating healthy aging into palliative care and broader Universal Health Coverage (UHC) processes in Uganda. The project will amplify the voices, experiences, and priorities of older persons seeking chronic care at national referral hospitals and hospices in Uganda, and work to ensure that older people’s views are reflected in policies and health-system decisions concerning chronic care.
Uganda’s population is ageing. More than 2.29 million citizens are aged 60 years and above, representing about 5% of the population, and life expectancy has risen from 63.7 years in 2014 to 68.2 years1. This demographic shift is accompanied by a growing burden of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes and stroke. Over 80% of older persons depend on subsistence farming and lack formal social security2, while traditional family support structures are weakening. As a result, many older persons living with chronic and life-limiting illness, and their families, face severe unmanaged pain, poverty, social isolation and limited access to age-friendly health and social care. Institutionalising comprehensive, person-centred chronic, palliative and end-of-life care for older persons within UHC processes is essential to guarantee their dignity and quality of life.
The SCORE project will, among other activities, collect, aggregate, and consolidate views of older people accessing chronic care to form a policy brief; engage policymakers, including parliamentarians representing older persons and the Ministry of Health; hold community dialogues and awareness sessions on healthy aging; and compose and support an older persons’ healthy aging champions group to sustain the advocacy beyond the project cycle, among other activities. The project will contribute greatly towards PCAU’s vision of Palliative Care for ALL in Uganda.
About Palliative Care and the work of PCAU
Palliative care is the active holistic care of individuals across all ages with serious health-related suffering due to severe illness, and especially of those near the end of life. It aims to improve the quality of life of patients, their families and their caregivers.
To know more about the work of PCAU, visit https://pcauganda.org/
References:
- Uganda Bureau of Statistics (2024). National Population and Housing Census 2024. https://www.ubos.org/nphc-2024-census-page/
2.Uganda Social Protection platform 2017 Investing in Social Protection in Uganda: The case for the expansion of the Senior Citizens’ Grant
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