The International Children’s Palliative Care Network (ICPCN) wishes to express its great delight on hearing the news that the Executive Board of the World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted a historic stand-alone resolution that calls for the strengthening of palliative care as a component of integrated treatment within the continuum of care. This resolution will be referred to the World Health Assembly in May of 2014.
Chief Executive of the ICPCN, Joan Marston, reports that the ICPCN has been strategically involved in the work leading up to this momentous decision. “We have given significant input into the resolution as it pertains to children and will continue to work for the voice and needs of children to be included in the final document that goes to the World Health Assembly (WHA) which includes all the Ministers of Health.” She went on to praise the work that has been done by such champions for the cause as Stephen Connor of the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance (WPCA) and Diederik Lohman from Human Rights Watch in getting the resolution adopted and for their support for the inclusion of children at all levels of the process.
The ICPCN sees this as a giant step forward in realising our goal of palliative care for all children who need it; where provision is made for the training of all relevant healthcare workers and others involved in the supportive care of life limited children. More importantly, we hope that this will greatly improve access to palliative care drugs for children in the developing world, including strong opioids.
We encourage all advocates for children’s palliative care to use this resolution to push the agenda for children’s palliative care forward within your countries.
You can read more about this in the article published today in the international edition of ehospice
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