The Palliative Care Support Trust (PCST) in Malawi this year trained 196 church leaders on how to use the ‘Inspiring Hope Handbook’. The handbook is a resource that was developed to support the delivery of palliative care services in communities by the churches.
The Inspiring Hope Hand Book was written and produced by Dr Jane Bates with the financial support from EMMS International. Dr Jane Bates is a Palliative Care Physician based at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. She is a founding Board Chair Person of the Trustees of PCST.
The trainings were also supported by EMMS International. EMMS is a charity organization based in Scotland who support the efforts of health delivery including palliative care in Malawi.
Church leaders were specifically targeted for this training as they tend to care for their congregation when sick. Empowerment in regards to palliative care was what was identified as a gap.
The training focused on defining palliative care to the church leaders. The leaders were enlightened to the expected roles of the church to patients facing an inevitable death. The concepts of pain management, spiritual care and psychosocial responsibility of the church in the community was well explained. The training was concluded by allowing the church leaders to produce work plans for their churches in groups. The work plans were in regards to practical aspects of the care to the sick among their congregation.
During the training one of the participants commented, “It is good that we are trained on how to use this handbook. Now I realize my role as a religious leader in caring for someone …It is an eye opener that we, as religious leaders, can help palliative care patients by providing physical, psychosocial and spiritual support.”
Dr. Cornelius Huwa, Medical Director of Palliative Care Support Trust, in his opening remarks to one of the training meetings said, “It is a great opportunity for Malawi that the church can meet with the health care system as regards to the care of the patients with life limiting illnesses. A platform has been created to foster sharing of ideas on how best to provide comfort and relief from suffering to those who have life limiting and life threatening illnesses and their families”.
In his remarks he also emphasised on the special needs of children who need palliative care who mostly get to be left out of plans made by adults.
The ‘Inspiring Hope Handbook’ can be found and downloaded on EMMS Website: www.emms.org
Leave a Reply